The Skill Of Following Up

I am amazed at how many times people don't follow up with a marketing contact. I am amazed, but I am not throwing stones because this is a problem I have fallen prey to at times. That said, there really are few valid excuses for not following up. With scheduling calendars, task reminders, and a host of other productivity tools, it should be a slam dunk to follow up 100% of the time.

Of course, things can happen to throw our schedule out of whack. For example, an emergency can arise that makes us miss a follow-up deadline. Internet issues can cause our system to go down, and with it, our online life. But when the dust settles, hopefully we have a system in place that helps us find our list of communications to follow-up on. Here are a few tips that I use (most of the time :) )

Task Flags In Outlook- This is my first line of follow up marking. If there is an e-mail I need to follow up on, I will click the little flag on the message. This way I can visually tell at a later time if a message needs to be followed up on.

• Drag Message In My Calender- Another thing I do for messages that have a longer follow-up range is to drag the e-mail message to my calendar. Not only can I schedule a reminder for the e-mail, but the entire content of the e-mail is copied into the calendar so I don't have to search for it later.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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• Save My Phone Call Notes To A Calendar- Outlook allows you to drag any file to its calendar for an easy schedule event. If you save your telephone notes on a notepad file or any other file, you can then drag it to the calendar and have all the points of your conversation saved on your calendar. Of course, you can also paste the content into the calendar when you create a new event instead of dragging the file to the calendar.
  
  
• Send Yourself An E-mail- Often, I will send myself an e-mail with something I want to follow up on. Then, I will either mark the flag or drag it into the calendar like I do with other messages.
  
  
• Sync Your Calendar With Your Mobile Device- You may not always be by your computer, but chances are you always have your phone with you. Today's smart phones almost always come with a free way to sync your calendar with the phone. This way, you will always be able to see if you have an upcoming commitment, even when you are away from your computer.
  

There are many other tips you can use to effectively manage your follow ups. I hope these help you. But, in the end, we are all human. Technology will only help us go so far. It's ultimately up to use to make the call, send the e-mail or create the text message to follow up with.