7 reasons why we should follow-up
Following up is an important part of our lives. Some of us have businesses, and different endeavors that we are involved in. However, many of us do not or haven’t been following up within these endeavors. These are 7 reasons, I believe, we should follow up. If there are additional reasons why we should follow up, please feel free to share them below and subscribe.
Our Clients
We lose sales and customers- It's a Tuesday afternoon and we used Monday to create a list of potential clients. We began calling our customers and we had a few that were interested in our product! However, there were some that said, “I need some more time to think about”. We tell the customer okay and we keep making more calls. During that time we never created a follow up list for our customers that said they needed more time. Due to our mistake we now may have lost those customers and sales. This is one of the mistakes that we make when it comes to business or even a personal matter. Remember we need to follow up to minimize losing any sales or any customers. Having to call customers may not apply to every business, but the principle remains the same.
Our customers might feel we are just in it for the money- When we pitch an idea or product and we show a customer why our product is better than the competition’s, the customer may say “I need some time and will like to explore my options.” We decide to give the customer some distance, but never follow up with them to see if they made a final decision. The customer may even remember you and wait for you to follow up with them so they can purchase your product. They may wonder why you never followed up with them and think you were just in it for the money and then proceed to purchase the product they were interested in elsewhere. This is a huge mistake that some of us make. We cannot allow the customer to feel that we are just in it for the money, especially if we're actually not in it for the money and we really love our brand. Follow up with them to see how they're doing and if they have any questions. We need to make ourselves available to them so we can help them through the process. This will show the customer that we care, we’re very confident that our product is better than what's on the market, and we want to establish trust. Trust is a very important element when it comes to working with clients. No trust no sale.
It comes off that we may not believe in our product- How many of us have actually seen times when we may go to a store or the mall and there's either a young or older adult selling a specific product. They try to sell it to us and we may say to them “I have something similar that actually works” and the sales representative doesn’t follow up with anything. They just say ok and don't say anything afterwards. They just continue to the next person. If we are going to sell a product, we need to make sure that we know that product. We need to believe in the product and know that product inside and out. We should know our product’s strengths and we should know our product’s weaknesses. If we were that sales rep we should have made sure that the customer understood the details of the product and the reasons it could potentially be better than the one they have at home. Making sure that we follow up with a customer and we know the details of our product is very important. That could have been an opportunity for us to change that customer's mind. Time is not something that we get back so we need to make sure that we know our product and believe in it, and most importantly that our customer knows we believe in it.
The “displeased customers” are very important too - Occasionally we may have some customers who leave a bad review. I've seen some entrepreneurs leave the person giving a bad review out of their business equation. They just focus on the customers who invest in their product. I truly do believe that this is a huge mistake. I believe that the individuals who give unfavorable reviews are very important to our business growth and success. They allow us to see something we haven’t contemplated about or a business market or a feature of our product that we never thought about venturing in. I do understand that we cannot please everyone, but if that reviewer is willing to work with us and give our product a second chance, that’s good business on our end. They may even give a better review which can possibly persuade another customer to purchase our product.
Follow up with yourself
How many books do we read and don’t take notes? This one was a huge one for me. I was reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki and a friend of mine asked what the book was about? I told him the name of the book was called “FaKE” and what it was about. I then tried to tell him about what I read in the earlier chapters. There was a particular line that was very powerful, so I started to skim the earlier chapters to try and find it. I could not find it! It was embarrassing that I was reading a book but didn’t even remember one of the most important points. I didn't write anything down or take any notes. This is one of the things that I had to learn and put into practice, because I was so used to reading books and only taking notes for school. When it came to taking notes with my personal reading, I needed improvement. I believe that we all should take notes whenever we read. With writing down what we read, we are able to follow up with ourselves to remember key points that we can apply to our lives.
Follow-ups at the workplace
Email…Follow…ups… I get chewed out about this a lot at my 9 to 5 job. There are so many times where I'm in the middle of a task and I get a call where I have to take care of the caller's needs. I would send an email to the person I spoke to reminding them of what we spoke about and how we will address their concern. Boom! I send my email then go right back to the previous task that I was working on. Weeks later I get an email from a superior asking if I got a call from XXXXXXX. I go to their office and say “Yeah I did, I sent them an email a couple of weeks ago”. They then ask “What did they email you back?” Crap!… I didn't follow up with the caller to see if they got my email and I didn’t even work on their request yet.
Following up to see if an email was sent/received is very important. The person that we emailed could have gotten caught up and busy doing other tasks and it could have fallen through the cracks. We need to make sure we send follow up emails so our superiors don’t chew us out lol.
What could we do better? We walked out of a job interview and think we did an amazing job. We practiced the lines before the interview to prepare ourselves the best way we could and we even made sure that we chose an outfit that wouldn’t be a distraction. A week passes by and we see the job emailed us back. The email thanked us for being interested but they chose another candidate who fit the job criteria better. We are crushed and we become highly upset. We are so upset that we don't even reach back out to the job interviewer to ask if there was anything we could improve on? What are some things we could have done better? This is especially important when we want to continue to grow and get better career wise. Asking for feedback is one way we can stop making the same mistakes repeatedly. This will help us not only pertaining to jobs but our personal growth as well.
Thank you for reading my post “7 reasons why we should follow-up”. Following up is very important not just in the work place, but also in our daily lives. Feel free to comment below any additional reasons we should follow up. What challenges have you faced with following up? Also, how has following up helped your business? I will love to hear your take! Please feel free to share this post with friends, family and coworkers. If you are new to Millennial Oaks please subscribe.