The Follow-Up That Never Went

The proposal went out on a Tuesday. The owner was pleased with it, and the conversation that led to it had gone well. By Friday there was no reply. By the following Wednesday there was still no reply, and the owner, who had a dozen other things to do, decided the silence meant no. She did not send a follow-up, because following up felt like pestering, and she did not want to be the kind of business that pesters. Three months later she learnt, by accident, that the customer had been waiting for her to call and had gone elsewhere when she did not.

Every owner has a version of this story. It is the most expensive silence in business, and it costs more than the discount nobody asked for, because the discount loses margin on a sale and the unsent follow-up loses the whole sale. A business that sends one proposal a week and closes half of them, and then stops following up on the other half, is walking away from a quarter of its possible revenue every year on the assumption that silence is an answer.

Silence is almost never an answer. Silence is a busy person who has not got to it, a decision that needs one more signature, a question the customer felt awkward asking, a budget that is confirmed next month. The owner reads it as rejection because rejection is the fear she is carrying, and a feared thing is seen everywhere. So the follow-up, which would have cost two minutes and a sentence, does not go, and the pipeline that the model depends on quietly empties.

The floor shows this in two places. The operating plan counts proposals out and proposals closed, and the gap between them is where the unsent follow-ups live. The financial model needs a certain number of yeses per month, and when they do not arrive the model asks why, and the honest answer is often that nobody asked twice.

The response is to make following up a process rather than a feeling, so that it happens whether or not the owner is in the mood to be told no.

Decide the rhythm in advance and write it into the operating plan. A proposal goes out, and if there is no reply it is followed up on day three, day seven and day fourteen. Each follow-up is short and assumes nothing. Checking you received it. Wondering whether there is a question I can answer. Letting you know the date the proposal holds until. None of these is pestering. Each is what a business that wants the work does, and the customer who was never going to say yes is not offended, while the customer who was waiting for a nudge is relieved.

Then take the follow-up away from yourself if you can. The owner's fear of rejection is attached to the owner. An assistant, a colleague or a scheduled email carries none of it and sends the message on day three because day three is when it is sent. The highest-performing pipelines I have seen were not run by the most persuasive people. They were run by people who followed up on the day the plan said to.

Then count. Proposals out, follow-ups sent, replies received, yeses. Put the four numbers in the monthly review. The first time you see that the yeses arrive mostly after the second or third message, which they do, the idea that silence means no stops making sense, and the follow-up stops feeling like pestering and starts feeling like the job.

And when the answer is finally a no, write it down too. A no with a reason is worth more than a silence, because it tells the model something about the price, the offer or the customer that a silence never will. Tomorrow I want to look at the plan that changes shape depending on who was asked last, which is what a business without a floor calls strategy.

Continue reading: The Plan That Changes Shape →

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