Are you having to follow-up more than ever?
Don Shapiro
When we see leadership as a behavior and not a job, we can increase retention and thriving. Speaker, Consultant, Thinker, Researcher on innovations in leadership, culture, retention, strategy for hospitals, restaurants +
Is it just me? Or have you noticed that you’re having to follow-up a lot more than you used to?
Maybe everyone’s so crazy busy that they don’t have time to get back to us. And then they forget we reached out because so much more has happened since then.
Or maybe people have just gotten used to us always following up. They count on us like a faithful alarm clock, dog or cat.
Something changed.
I’ve noticed that the number of touch points to schedule a live phone call or in-person meeting has skyrocketed in the last few years.
Even a brief call or short meeting can take half a dozen to a dozen follow-ups before you can pin the other person down. And you wait. Wait. Wait for a response. Wait until the appropriate amount of time has passed to reach out again. And again.
In this day where everything happens faster and people expect things faster, agreeing to have a conversation is taking longer than ever. What gives?
Something changed.
Even if they actually want to talk with you it can take forever to get the call scheduled. You agree with them on the day to talk, the day comes and when you reach out to set the time they never respond. Then you have to reach out again after a few days and they apologize. Then the cycle continues.
I’ve had way too many situations where it took me months just to get an in-person meeting scheduled. In one case, it took me 10 follow-ups to have a two minute conversation to schedule the longer conversation. They looked at their calendar and scheduled the meeting three months later! Really?
Maybe our electronic world is behind this. We message, text, post, tweet, like, comment, email and more over and over. Could this have conditioned people to expect us to jump through a certain amount of hoops before we are considered worthy of a live conversation?
Or is everyone having five electronic chats at the same time? Every second counts. Squeeze the most out of it. But not enough time to get on the phone and have a quality conversation with just one person. Because, of course, that would take too much time.
Something changed.
I’m realistic enough to realize I’m not going to change this trend. I feel better just talking about it. Until I looked at my to do list and saw all the follow-ups I have to make.
So I Googled about following up and discovered a blog by C.J. Hayden “44 Ways to Follow Up with Your Prospects” At first, there was hope. Here were more ways than you ever imagined to initiate a follow-up or justify making that next connection attempt. It’s a really good list of ideas.
Then it struck me. Why do we need to have articles that give us 44 ways to follow-up? Because we are having to follow-up more and more and we need more tools than ever to make something happen.
What worries me is that the trend line is moving toward even more follow-ups.
Of course, every trend creates its antidote. In our push for greater productivity and efficiency, we look for ways to get more of those live conversations in less time. Sort of like the back and forth between The Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote.
In this case, we see this huge growth in automation to handle lead generation and even early follow-up. As if taking the personal out of the equation solves anything. The more automation that comes at us, the more we create barriers so it doesn’t consume our time and interrupt us from what we have to get done.
That forces the automation people to find new ways to make it work. Where does the cycle end? The Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote are still trying to outsmart each other.
Yes, something changed here.
This is not a thought piece with answers. Only questions for you to ponder. Maybe there’s a better way. Maybe our technologically driven, do more with less people, faster than fast world has resulted in an unintended consequence. It created something that eats up more of our time so we get less done. Irony of ironies.