{"id":677,"date":"2013-01-29T16:12:20","date_gmt":"2013-01-29T16:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/?p=677"},"modified":"2013-01-29T16:12:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T16:12:21","slug":"follow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/follow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Follow-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cSuccess comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?\u201d Anthony Robbins<\/strong><\/p>\n

I confess, I have been guilty of the crimes of bad follow-up and I know it has held me back. I still fall of the wagon more times than I should.<\/p>\n

You may have noticed a plural in the opening sentence, the \u2018s\u2019 at the end of crime is there because there are two distinct types of bad follow-up.<\/strong>
\nMaybe it\u2019s better to clarify what I mean by \u201cfollow-up\u201d first – it can be telephoning or e-mailing after exchanging business cards or when we give a subordinate a task and we check if the task is being, or has been, successfully performed.<\/strong>
\nThe two types are: common negligence of failing to follow-up and deliberate excess follow-up (overkill).<\/p>\n

Do we fail to follow-up sales leads because we have so many that we don\u2019t need the extra business,<\/strong> or, is it because we are not comfortable making that first phone call<\/strong> (fear of rejection)?
\nThat would mean we just exchange business cards to be polite. I don\u2019t know how many business cards can be made from the average tree, but in any case, it is a waste.
\nWe forget that it creates a bad impression if we say we will call and then don\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What about the other extreme, bombarding the person with e-mails and phone calls,<\/strong> the dreaded overkill that labels the sender as either desperate or a time waster? Sometimes I don\u2019t give out my business card if I have doubts about the person but at times you just can\u2019t avoid it and end up being pestered.<\/p>\n

Failing to follow-up with subordinates at work is a capital crime,<\/strong> since it affects quality, the way we work as a team and whether we keep staff motivated.<\/p>\n

The amount of follow-up should decrease with the length of time that a person has been doing a task.<\/strong> New, or inexperienced, staff need timely attention – they may not understand what you expect of them and any work for a prior boss may have been handled completely differently. Clear instructions and encouragement to ask questions without fear of looking stupid, avoids costly mistakes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once again we have the opposite extreme \u2013 stifling the competent employees by constantly looking over their shoulder.<\/strong> Not showing confidence in their work, can cause frustration that could result in them leaving or starting to underperform.<\/p>\n

Follow-up should be regarded as \u2018protection of investment\u2019.<\/strong>
\nIn the case of contacts, you are protecting your investment in time and credibility,<\/strong> and in the second you are supporting your team to perform at their best.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"sticky_note\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cSuccess comes from taking the initiative and following up… persisting… eloquently expressing the depth of your love. What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?\u201d Anthony Robbins I confess, I have been guilty of the crimes of bad follow-up and I know it has held me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.success-academy.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}