You probably recognise it, you've had a fantastic meeting and drive back home or to the office full of enthusiasm. After your visit, you find yourself back in the daily grind of the work that needs to be done. Before you know it, you find yourself a few weeks later in time and you may even have forgotten to arrange the follow-up to the appointment.
Tools for monitoring appointments
Here are a few pointers on how to follow up on an appointment;
- Summarise your conversation in a summary that you send to the prospect after the meeting. A nice and often valuable gift and also a reminder for yourself of the action points you discussed.
- Also record the summary in your own CRM or alternatively in a well-organised Excel sheet
- Note down your action points directly in your calendar, if this is not linked to your CRM
- Follow up your action points preferably by telephone. You can often discuss more on the phone than by e-mail. Keep the notes from your earlier conversation handy.
- If you have trouble speaking to the prospect, send a short mail
- Take care of a monthly consultation with your colleagues in which you inform each other about the running agreements and outstanding action points
The power of succession
An often-heard signal is that you have had a nice conversation, but that you can't speak to the prospect again despite having sent him an e-mail twice already. In the end, the power is in the follow-up of online appointments where, especially in the case of a fantastic appointment, you can choose to make the last mail more personal by indicating that you are not interested. After all, you have both invested time in it!