Chapter 6
Follow Up—People Are Comforted by Consistency

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

—ARISTOTLE

A COUPLE OF weeks ago, I attended an excellent networking event. The best part was chatting with people, many of whom were excellent connections for my business. I typically follow up right away after meeting people and have developed many of my best professional relationships this way. This time, however, I decided to conduct an experiment: I decided to wait and see what would happen if I did not follow up. I had 10 cards on my desk from people who had expressed significant interest in staying in touch with me. Yet after a week, not one of them had. No one had followed up.

Are you similarly guilty of not following up when you should?

Do you have a stack of business cards on your desk, just sitting there?

Do you struggle with finding the right mix of keeping in touch but not becoming pushy or annoying?

If you answered yes to any of these three questions, you need to develop a better system for keeping in touch. System is the key word because you don’t want to reinvent the wheel each time you need to follow up. You don’t want to have to put a ton of thought into each follow-up, or chances are good that you will not take action. You’ll decide that you don’t have enough time and won’t do anything.