A prominent nemisis of opportunity and value creation is being incompetent at following up with people. I want to share my system for remember to write followup emails.
But first…
I want to deflate the hesitancy around following up with people if they haven’t responded to you.
I don’t care whether we’re talking about doing a business development deal or asking someone cute to meet you for a bebida alcohólica, just because someone doesn’t get back to you doesn’t mean they’re not interested.
Maybe they were going to get back to you, but forgot to respond. Maybe your message got lost in their inbox. Maybe they’re dog got sick and they declared email bankruptcy. The bottom line is, you shouldn’t assume the reason why someone didn’t get back to you is because they’re not interested. This is why it’s imperative to always follow up! (More on how to write effective followup emails here)
Even when you’re cognizant of this, it can be challenging to remember to follow up with someone when they haven’t gotten back to you.
Instead of relying upon my cognizance after the fact, I pre-empt these situations with a system that ensures I follow up with someone if they don’t get back to me.
This system leverages Boomerang from Baydin and the “old compose” mode in Gmail (FollowUp.cc is also a great option, especially for non-gmail users!).
The video below is 1 of 42 lectures in a new online course I created called Master Gmail to Be 10X More Productive.
So far 130+ people have taken it and the average review rating is 4.93 / 5 stars, but hey, whose counting….anyway, here’s the video:
[leadplayer_vid id=”517D43F097AED”]
The key to making this system work is making sure to remember to click “view message” in the light box after you send it. I’ve gradually built a habit of doing and its served me incredibly well. For work related emails, I also use a spreadsheet to track deal interactions which serves as a great “back-up” in the event I fail to abide by the sacred tenets of the boomerang follow-up covenant.
One thing I always try to do is answer commonly asked questions in blog post form. Curious about how I handle a situation you think we might share? Let me know what you’re struggling with in the comments and maybe I’ll write a post about it.