The Art Of Following Up

Following up with people is vital for a producer. Remember your priority is not their priority.

As long as you do it artfully and thoughtfully, people will be really glad you did.

Michael Roderick, in his excellent daily newsletter, has some great advice on how to do it well. He lists four learnings from all his years of following up:

1. Everyone has a different response time – If I were standing in front of you and said hello, you would likely say hello back. You’d feel it was rude to ignore me. You also would say hello back very quickly to eliminate the awkward silence. Some people are like that with email or other communication. They respond right away, while others may read something and take time to respond. So if someone doesn’t instantly respond to your message, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are ignoring you. They just may have a different response time.
2. Everyone has a preferred channel – We all have a way that we like to communicate. Some people prefer in-person interaction and will not correspond in any other format. Some people live on the Book of Faces and treat their messenger like email. Some focus only on inbox correspondence. The list goes on and on. If you’re not hearing back from someone, it may be that the channel of communication you decided to use is either not in use or simply too backed up.
3. Everyone gets busy – Even the person with the most mundane life in the world will have some period where things are a little more hectic than usual, and the first thing to go in those instances is responding to other people’s requests. Sometimes we reach out at a time when people are swamped, and it takes a number of nudges before they are even able to realize that we’re reaching out to them.
4. Everyone deserves an “out” – We all have had moments in our lives when we agreed to something in the moment and later on realized we made a mistake. In these instances, it’s pretty common to ignore any follow-up from the person we made the agreement with because of the guilt we feel from changing our mind, even though we have every right to change our minds. Sometimes, if someone isn’t responding to follow-ups, it’s worth it to offer them an out. Let them know that if they don’t want us to contact them anymore, they can say so.

And for the few who get annoyed by your follow up?…Well, you just got a sneak peak as to what it’s like to work with them. You can cut ties now and save everyone a whole lot of aggravation down the road.