From my perspective LinkedIn is not a stand-alone platform, it’s very much part of what I call the big picture.

LinkedIn has many very useful and very effective resources, however one of the resources it doesn’t do well, is what I call the follow up and follow through.

The follow up is absolutely key and essential in any business communication, not just sales.

How often have you been disappointed when someone does not fulfil their promise to follow up.

The promise to contact someone at a further date in time, and carry it out, is a fabulous way of building credibility and professionalism.

The minute that you don’t fulfil your promise in my opinion, I think you lose credibility.

The follow up is one very simple question?

Quite simply you ‘ask’ permission to follow up, so let’s say you’re having a conversation and you get to the end of the conversation, you politely ask permission to follow up …

‘’Fred, would you mind if I followed up in a couple of months? ‘’ most people would be grateful that you’ve asked permission and most of the time will nod and say yes.

Then what do you do?

You remain patient do absolutely nothing and follow up on the day you promised.

I remember in earlier days when people were trying to sell me something. I noticed the more astute person would ask my permission to follow up on a certain day …

In reality many did not see their promise through, it validated they did not care about me or my business, they were looking for the quick win.

However, I must admit I had the greatest respect for someone that didn’t bother me, until the day came when they promised to follow up.

In my experience it built a lot of credibility, because they were actually seeing through their promise, but had the patience to wait till the chosen day.

You will find when you put to work this simple technique of the ‘follow up’ and asking permission, when you do follow up, your contact will have a lot more time for you and it will be a much more relaxed positive conversation.

I used to work in the motor industry. I absolutely loved it. Selling cars is a lot of fun and a real education.

We had one particular sales guy, that had more sales and made more money than anybody in the company, including the directors.

He knew not everyone is going to buy from him that day, but he was passionate about building his database and following up. They would eventually buy from him, so it was just a matter of patience. They never bought from anyone else but this guy.  He was a superstar. His work ethic left a lasting mark on me.

Its not complicated but requires consistency and patience.

LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for finding the right person and what I call ‘first’ contact and launching a relationship; however it gets quite tricky to manage all these relationships and you must find a way of following up.

You need to look outside of LinkedIn at other platforms, that can assist you in delivering the promise.

I can feedback what I have observed over the last 15 years, there are four things that people generally do …

One … they commit the follow to memory. You’ll forget. You won’t follow up.

Two … they enter the follow up in their calendar. Your calendar becomes very busy you’ll overlook it. You won’t follow up.

Three … they build an excel spreadsheet of follow ups. It quickly become unmanageable. You won’t follow up.

Four… they take time to invest and learn a CRM system and subcontract this important task to a bit of tech that will soon become their best pal.

You’ll follow up on time.

The one take away from this blog, is do you have a dependable, fail-safe system for follow ups?

If not, investigate CRM software.

I particularly like Pipedrive is very simple, it does everything I needed to do, and the entry cost is £15 a month… https://www.pipedrive.com

The thing about CRM systems, many are large complicated expensive systems, most of the functionality you will never need.

Start with a piece of paper and work out what your contact strategy is going to be (steps and touches) and look for a simple system that delivers the ‘piece of paper’.

I’m very lucky to be in a lot of businesses. When I look at the sales team, usually the top performer is the person who uses a CRM system and follows up.

 

If we are not connected please connect with me here https://www.linkedin.com/in/milesduncan/

Thank you for reading this article, please share it with you colleagues.

You are very welcome to come to my next free event https://www.b2bsuccesssystems.co.uk/free-events/