How to follow up

– Great job nailing that meeting with your target executive. You were fantastic. Now it’s time to channel all that momentum that you’ve created into a series of steps that are going to move your deal forward. You are an all-time high in mindshare with your executive. She’s never thought more about you than right now. You’ve got a short window of time to take a few steps to take that mindshare and convert it into actions that are beneficial to your process. The first step I recommend taking is sending a note. Seems pretty obvious, but not everyone does it. You just want to make sure that you thank her for her time, that you let her know that you’re on the action items, and that you appreciated the conversation. I recommend starting with a connection request over LinkedIn. It’s a great step, it’s easy, and it’s something she’s probably in the flow of accepting already. You could also follow up with an email or an InMail, but it’s nice to get that dialog started, and I recommend doing it the same day the meeting happened. You want to really make sure that you can strike while the iron’s hot. Next, when you have a minute to process the notes of this deal and you’re in your flow with your CRM, with Sales Navigator, make sure that you are saving as a lead in Sales Navigator, your executive, if you haven’t done that already, and anyone else she might’ve mentioned in that meeting, so that you can be prompted with information that can give you a valid reason for reaching out in the future. Those little tidbits of information that Sales Navigator can feed you can sometimes be the difference between a thoughtful follow-up and not having any good reason at all to follow-up. Last, keep your exec up-to-date on the progress of what you and she discussed. This is really important and this is a step that’s very often skipped by reps. Most folks send a nice thank you email afterwards, but when it gets to days and weeks and sometimes months after that initial meeting, sometimes the communication can stop. What I recommend doing here is being better than everyone else by doing exactly what you say. You said you were going to follow-up, you were going to keep her in the loop, do so. I think it really reinforces three important things. The first is it literally just keeps her up-to-date on the progress of your project. That’s important, because you’re going to need her sponsorship. The second is it reinforces, subtlety, that you are a person who does what you say you’re going to do. You told her you’d follow-up and keep her up-to-date, now you’re doing it. And third is it keeps you top of mind. So, there’s a little reminder for her every once in a while, ’cause, remember, her day’s busy, she’s working on other things. But by your follow-up periodically, she’s keeping your solution and you, personally, on her mind and those are all positive things for your forward progress.