The Importance of Follow Up

Well, I’ve been a very bad boy and haven’t posted for a long time. Bad, Neil! Bad! You know ... busy at work, life, yada, yada, yada. Excuses, excuses.

Let’s see if I can change all that and pick up where I left off.

Today’s ditty is about following up when you don’t win the gig. It’s one of those things that a lot of folks forget to do, or simply don’t want to do. But, it’s important. When you don’t land the project, you need to know why so you can adjust things, as needed, for the next go around. Without that information, you run the risk of repeating the same mistake (if there was one) over and over. That’s generally bad.

Some prospects will let you know, others will blow you off, but at least give it your best shot.

Here are a couple of examples:

We had a prospect call a while back to invite us to pitch their account. They’re a heavy industrial manufacturer. It’s an industry where we’ve historically had a lot of experience. And, it would be a high six figure chunk of change if we landed it.

So, we rolled up our sleeves and started to do the background research, went to several meetings and drafted our proposal. We felt good about things. The proposal was solid. The chemistry seemed positive. We didn’t get it.

Why? It turns out, when I followed up, the president of the company felt our experience was too much on the consumer end of things. He felt that way because the work on our site showed a lot of pieces with that slant.

Lesson learned? NE Ohio is still an industrial area. Even though the economy here for heavy industry is pretty much tanked, there are still prospects out there who need what we do and have money to spend. Needless to say, I’m working on adding more industrial pieces to our site.

Here’s another one. We had a former client contact us about a site redesign. We had done a few projects for them in the past, so they knew us. It was one of those Friday calls where they needed an estimate for a Monday meeting. I scrambled to put together the estimate and we got it to them late Friday afternoon.

Tuesday we got an email. We didn’t get that one either. My cohort here at the office called to follow up. Silence. Nada. Zilch. So, we figured they went with some other shop and blew us off.

A few days later, said cohort received an email from his contact. As it turns out, our numbers were fine. Pretty much the same as one of the other shops. They also had the place that did their current site quote the gig. They were lower than us, but the client didn’t have confidence in them anymore. Another firm came in roughly three times higher than us. What gives?

What gave was politics. One of the client’s employees spouse’s recommended the company that did their site and that’s who ended up winning the work.

The moral of the story is that sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. But, when you follow up and learn the reasons why you lose, you can position yourself in a better way down the road.