Breaking BizDev

Follow-Up DOs and DON'Ts for Business Development

• John Tyreman & Mark Wainwright • Season 1 • Episode 70

Share episode

Most business development conversations don’t fail in the meeting—they fail in the follow-up.

In this episode of Breaking BizDev, John Tyreman and Mark Wainwright unpack the DOs and DON’Ts of follow-up and explain why it’s one of the most critical—and most mishandled—parts of business development.

They frame follow-up as a link in the chain that either moves opportunities forward or quietly pulls them backward. Through real examples from sales and marketing, they show how effective follow-up builds clarity, trust, and momentum—and how bad follow-up (or none at all) derails deals.

You’ll learn:

  • What good follow-up actually does in sales and business development
  • Common follow-up mistakes that break momentum
  • Why “just checking in” often does more harm than good
  • How follow-up supports choreography from conversation to contract
  • The difference between sales follow-up and marketing follow-up

A must-listen for consultants, firm owners, doer-sellers, and anyone responsible for generating and closing professional services work.

Past episodes mentioned:

Share your feedback in our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8V9T6Z7

Mark:

what if I told you the most important part of selling actually happens after the meaning ends? It's fun to think about. Let's talk about on the podcast today.

John:

All right, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. Welcome consultants, sales professionals, marketing leaders, doers, sellers as we like to call'em. We've got a pretty, uh, a big tent here on the Breaking Biz Dev Podcast for all you business development professionals out there,

Mark:

do. Yeah.

John:

mark, how we feeling today?

Mark:

I like the topic we're going to discuss, follow up. We've taken this in, in slightly two different directions. When the I initial idea came up, I was pretty clear on what it was, and I think you were too. And then suddenly we realized that we had two slightly different ideas. But that's fine. That is fine. You, are coming at this, you know, or, or looking at this topic through a marketing lens, and I am looking at it through a sales lens. and, uh, there's a slightly, different sort of, uh, way that all. The way follow up plays out in both.

John:

I suppose I'm suffering a little bit from recency bias too because right now I'm, I'm doing a big outbound, effort. And, um, promoting a survey that I'm doing and by the time this podcast episode airs it, the report will probably be published. But yeah, follow up to me is follow up with targets to get survey responses right now.

Mark:

yeah, this is good. I think this is a good conversation and I think it's meaty. You know, the way a lot of these topics come up is that you and I start sort of thinking about this little idea and then it snowballs and lo and behold. We can go pretty deep on it.

John:

I like to think about it that we approach these topics from different angles, right? And there's different ways of looking at different problems, different topics related to sales, marketing, business development.

Mark:

sure.

John:

when we talked about follow-ups, uh, I thought, mark, you kind of phrased it really well and, and it's like, why do, why are we doing an episode on follow-ups? Well, I think, I think good follow-ups are like links in a chain, right? You've used that, that metaphor before in the past. But then I think it, it just kind of rings true in that they kind of collapse that distance between those touch points. Whether that's marketing, whether that's sales, but then bad follow-ups kind of. Reset that relationship or draw you back down the chain a little bit.

Mark:

Right, Yeah. I, I use the, chain metaphor a lot when talking about follow up and I view follow up as its own link in the chain, right? And it's not just something that's just tying the conversations together.'cause those are the only links. And I don't wanna play this metaphor too far, but I think, at the start of the episode, follow up is in and of itself. A link in the chain un super critical. And it, and if it's either gonna, tie everything together, it's all gonna, fall apart,

John:

I would say the same thing on the marketing side of things too, and it's building that familiarity and trust with a prospect. And each of those links are really important. Each of those touches are really important, and that's one of the psych, psychological or cognitive biases that kind of bleeds in here. And this is something that's common. With follow up on both the marketing and the sales side is we're leveraging these cognitive biases that we've talked about in the past. and if you want to kind of check out some of that check out, think it was like episode 54, the Psychology of Familiarity. That's a good episode to go check out. I like to think about it as like notes to play on, like your guitar or on a piano, right? Strike the right chord with your prospect.

Mark:

I like talking about follow up because it is so core to the work that I do with the firms and individuals I work with. It's, you know, I set that expectation up front with everyone. I say, you know, sure, we're doing these, we're having these conversations. We're creating these sort of sequences of activity. We can't let any of that kind of fall apart. So follow up is a critical component of it and guaranteed when I'm working with someone and they've had a good meeting, it was a great conversation. Heck, they took notes and you know, it was, they set some next steps and all that. But I say, all right, send me your follow up so I can kind of review it and we can talk about that together. They're like, oh shoot, I haven't done that yet. I'm like, wait a minute, wait, you had a great conversation and now it's gonna fall apart. So, yeah, it's super important.

John:

So we've organized the episode kind of coming from two different directions. That's how we've organized it here. So we've got good and bad marketing follow-ups, and then good and bad sales follow-ups. So Mark, do you wanna start on the sales side?

Mark:

Yeah. Let's go there. Why not? The goal of sales follow up is to establish and maintain that connection, right? The link in the chain. Metaphor, its purpose is to constantly reflect back, pull together and then reflect back sort of the nature of the content of the conversation so that we're all up to speed. but it is so powerful to have these conversations constantly documented. So initial conversation, follow up, subsequent conversation follow up. So you're constantly have, you know, you see that, that pattern just builds and builds, but we always wanna make sure that we're. Summarizing our understanding, reflecting it back, that we're clarifying our current situation where we are today. We want to ask and constantly get permission to continue to move ahead to set that next meeting. constantly re reaffirming, uh, making sure that we're all connected. And then defining together what's next. those are some sort of bullet points of what's involved in this whole follow up and kind of part of the, the big picture goal of what we're trying to achieve is just continue to march forwards.

John:

Link in the chain metaphor just is, is so perfect because this, it really is what kind of moves everything along. This is part of, you refer to this as choreography, right? And how everything kind of fits together.

Mark:

Yeah, this is, follow up is an important component in, choreography, right? So we've talked about that three part framework, that three part model, the create, the choreograph, and the contract. Then choreograph has all these important or sort of elements to it and follow up is woven all throughout that. So yeah, the whole choreograph concept is how do we take these maybes to. All the way through these series of conversations to a, to a successful contract. but yeah, follow up is a big component of that. So there's a handful of bullet points there. We've got some, you have some thoughts on good sales follow up

John:

Let's, uh, I, I've got some good, I've got some good examples I would love to share.

Mark:

Yeah. Good.

John:

so I worked at an agency a few, a few years ago and, um, I worked with this, professional. His name is Brendan and he has since gone out on his own and he has started his own consulting practice. He helps, small to mid-size businesses implement ag agentic workflows, AI tools. That kind of stuff. And I was exploring an idea with him about, you know, maybe there's a way that I could use AI agents to help distribute video content for myself and my clients. And, had a great intro meeting. But what stood out to me about Brendan was, in his follow follow-up, he was actually prototyping what that would look like. Then he actually found a potential issue that would've been like stopped everything in its tracks way down the line. And he flagged it and he brought it up and he was like, Hey, John, just wanted to follow up from our conversation. You know, I was prototyping this and found this issue and then just wanted to bring it up. And it ended up like he avoided wasting both my time and his time selling to me and developing a solution that wouldn't in inevitably work.

Mark:

Yeah. we have discussed that, uh, the goal is not always a contract. The goal is, you know, if, we are selling to a prospective client and there's not a good fit there, the hope is that. Pretty quickly, we can just be helping, right? If it's not a good fit, if they're not qualified, if we, if we find out any, any moment along the, the sequence of conversations that it's not gonna be a good fit, hopefully we can kinda redirect, I have done a similar thing in, in follow-up, you know, where someone has come to me and it I'm not exactly certain that they're a great fit, so I have referred them elsewhere and I've done it a couple different ways. I've referred them elsewhere in my to say it's, you know, from our conversation. This was my understanding and it appears that we're not a great fit, but we could be. But that's gonna be up to you. from my end, I think we're, we're a a, maybe we'll need to dig into it a little bit deeper, but go talk to these other people and see if that's a better fit. So keep me in mind, compare the two and someone else, maybe a better fit. And that one, I'm, I'm vaguely recalling that that specific opportunity. Ended up in a no decision anyway. So it was, they were just kind of out kicking tires and, uh, didn't end up working with anyone. So I think at the end of the day we helped kind of clarify their needs, better. So,

John:

that's one of the goals that you have outlined here in, in the follow-up is clarity, bringing clarity to the current situation and whether that's clarity for you as a seller, or clarity to the buyer, or clarity to both parties. So I think that's a, that's a fantastic example.

Mark:

Good. Good. And you had, did you have any, any other,

John:

I've got another one actually. Um, I just recently went through, you know, it's, we're recording this in Q4 and re just recently at the start of Q4, I went through my pipeline. It was just kind of like sending out those, magic email to, outstanding proposals in my pipeline. I just wanted to clean it out a little bit.

Mark:

yeah.

John:

And, um, got a good response from, an accounting firm opportunity that had just kind of gone silent a little bit, a few weeks without any response. I learned that through that process they wanted to be guests on other podcasts. And I showed them kind of compare and contrast that approach versus. Launching your own podcast and what are the benefits and the drawbacks of each of those. And I think that enlightened them a little bit. And uh, but I think it was too late in their like fiscal planning year. They didn't have the budget for it, so it teed up a potential new conversation in 2026 around it. So I thought that follow up and then kind of using that magic email to develop a new opportunity for the future. just wanted to kinda share that as an example of follow up.

Mark:

Good. All right. So let's get specific here. So I actually have an example. Uh, of an email that I used, I would say fairly recently, at some point in the last year or so, with actually a current client of mine, and it was a follow up from an initial qualification conversation. I had some specific questions that I ask when I'm in a qualification conversation. obviously, you know, they wanted to find out a little bit about me, but typically in my qualification conversations, I'm making sure that, you know, I have a specific agenda and some specific questions that I want people to answer. So here's that email like literally, thanks for taking the time to chat on Friday. Here's a little bit of what we discussed, and I'm anonymizing this the best I can. Best engineers is a fairly young firm with a few long timers with two main offices, one in the Midwest, the other on the west coast. You started with. Civil engineering and have added services and team members over the last handful of years growing to about a hundred people with five different practice areas. The practice leads are doer sellers supported by project managers and other, you know, business development marketing staff. Some are involved more or less than others, but you'd mentioned you'd like to get the up and comers involved in finding and winning new business as well. Okay, great. Good. I'm, I'm, this is me reflecting back everything we've talked about. You mentioned you've worked with external business consultants before and are open to the expertise they bring to your firm. You have grown and wished for that to continue. As an aside, that's a really important part for me, John. it's good to know that people have worked with external experts like myself, so that's good. back to the email here. On that note, growth has been rapid with modest profitability, but you want to be more consistent with sales. You talked about building a better sales engine. If that makes sense to me. You've made business plans previously but have fallen short on the execution end. The market is a bit of a question mark now, but there's definitely room for firms like yours to be proactive and take charge of their future. You're not the incumbent often because you're a young firm, but it seems you make up with that with some good energy and motivation and focus. There you go. That's the first big chunk of it. So I'm reflecting back everything I learned and there's a, there's a few check boxes that I've checked in that, you know, it's like, this is how big they are. This is what's motivating them. Currently they've worked with outside people, so they're open to talking to folks like me back to the email. This is great info and lays the foundation of our next conversation. So here I outline kind of what we're gonna do next in our next steps that we have determined. We're gonna dig into the details, talk about revenue, talk about plans, talk about goals, et cetera. I'd also like to talk to some spec specific team members. We mentioned there's a dozen or so people that would benefit from some one-on-one and group Work with me. We've got our conversation scheduled on Thursday. Bring some information. With you, then I may share a bit more about what I Mark will do, and can do with firms like theirs. So we'll start to design a potential engagement together that will get you where you want to be with, you know, your sales team, your doer, sellers being more comfortable and confident with sales. So. There you go. That's the email I paraphrased a little bit here and there, but you know, clearly some chunks. Big picture, what's the need, right? What's kind of motivating them right now? Check a few check boxes on my end and you know, here's our next steps and expectations, et cetera. So that's pretty typical of a follow-up email that I will write after qualification. And then I will have a very similar email after discovery, which is another follow up. And the beauty is, and I think I've mentioned this in the past, the beauty of this type of follow up is that I am building my statement of understanding that, ultimately in our, in our sort of proposal conversation. I am articulating my deep understanding of them, their situation, their needs, et cetera. And that is built from these different building blocks that we've got in these follow up emails. So, you know, people get a little frustrated when they have to sit down and write their proposal and all that, you know, it's just because they're, it's laborious and it's a lot of time to write the proposal. But, you know, if you are doing this right, this follow up. Is building the proposal, live.

John:

Yeah, this is a gold mine of to be able to go back there and copy and paste some of these paragraphs. You know, assuming that your understanding is in line with their understanding. Right. And that's part of this process, engaging with your counterparts to kind of. Level set and align on that. This is great. You're establishing, um, what the goals are, what good looks like in the future. Yeah, it totally is. And this is again, that link in the chain analogy just holds true. This is tying everything together. Mm-hmm.

Mark:

So, so there you go. There is, uh, some good follow up. You talked about, um, Brendan, um, another example you had from that accounting firm opportunity. I gave of kind of a literal example here of follow up. So all of this is good follow up.

Mark Wainwright:

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman:

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright:

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman:

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright:

and now back to the show.

John:

let's, flip the coin mark. What does bad look like?

Mark:

What does, what does bad? What does bad look like? Well, you know, the worst follow up is no follow up at all. And, you know, I kind of joked about that initially in this conversation, but man, John, it happens a lot. It blows my mind that people don't follow up. And I think that. Maybe they took their notes or maybe everybody was just really happy with the conversation and maybe there was just this big fat assumption that, oh, follow up isn't really necessary right here. We were aligned, we were in sync. We set our next steps so we don't have to do anything in between That conversation in our next conversation, and I'm thinking, oh man, you are missing a golden opportunity here. Right? That's, it's the link in the chain, but it's also this, additional little. Sort of touch that, you know, reflect your understanding, clarify things, you know, ask for maybe more information or edits to the understanding, et cetera. So, you know, no follow up is a

John:

I wonder how much that is intentional versus unintentional though, because I know for, from my own experience, I'm, totally guilty of this, where I'll be on a sales call and then I'll have another meeting right at like back to back with that one. Right? And then like that meeting ends and sometimes it's like two or three. And then at the end of the day, I gotta get home. I gotta get, you know, pick up the kids or I gotta pick up dinner or whatever. And then by the time that like, it dawns on me that, oh crap, I didn't follow up with that prospect. You know, sometimes it's a couple days later. So I sympathize for like the busy, like stacked schedules. But to your point though, about follow up and the importance of it. You know, now I, I know to like block time after those meetings. Right. Like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, just to like reserve it for that level of follow up.

Mark:

Yeah. And, as kind of an aside, we are running out of excuses, for, you know, good, Follow up that is a reflection of the conversation because we've got so many AI notetakers now that you can just fire one of those up in your conversation. But, you know, uh, obviously if you are, if you are meeting virtually, I meet with a lot of people virtually, but, you know, you can do this in person as well. It's a little bit trickier, but

John:

Real quick, mark, just real quick, complete segue. Did you hear the story about fireflies? And how well Firefly ai, right? Like the popular like note taker AI app. It started out as two dudes in like a living room in San Francisco, and it was ne, it never started out as ai, it was just, they would hop on the calls as Fred from note takers or whatever, hit mute, take notes and send it to their, their customers after the fact to justify like a$750 million valuation or whatever.

Mark:

That's hysterical. I love it. Good Good aside. Good aside. So yeah, so we're running out of excuses for, a lot of people say, well, you know, it was just a good free flowing conversation. I didn't have an opportunity to take notes. I didn't wanna stop. And, uh, you know,'cause some people have a tough time. I mean, admittedly, most do have a tough time listening, actively listening, participating in a conversation and taking notes at the same time. But if you have a note taker, you know that helps and it is super helpful, but you have to go back and you have to edit it. Right? So, so that's, that's a little bit there. Let's you know, make sure, let's, let's stay focused on bad follow up here. So no follow up is terrible. We're running out of excuses to use that one. But no follow up is terrible. Late follow up can break the chain late. Follow up to me is, heck, I don't know, is it days? Is it a week? It's like, it seems like if you have a conversation and. There's some next action coming fairly quickly in a week or two. Your follow up needs to happen like almost immediately, right? It's, yeah. I mean, it's schedule dependent, it's situational dependent, whatever else. But man, you should be able to follow up to, with just about any conversation within a couple days, and the importance there is making sure that you're creating something that helps both of you. Remember the conversation, remember what was discussed, remember next steps, everything else. And I'm, I'm not a super old dude, but you know, I'm old enough to, the memory starts to fade if, you know, things drag on a little bit too long. So yeah, late follow up can be a disaster as well, so that's bad. A third thing we kind of had written down here is pushy. Follow up. And I think a lot of people will feel that, we were being pushy when we are following up, so they're not gonna do it. But yeah, a lot of emails that, that, you know, we'll send up or however we're following up, will seem a little bit pushy. There's an opportunity to recognize a mutual need. The whole mutuality of this, meaning that the buyer has a need and you have the, have a seller have the need as well, right? I mean, there's going to be this, this potentially mutually beneficial situation where they're getting what they want and need and you're getting what you want and need. So it's it's important right up front to understand that. So we're not trying to be pushy, we're just recognizing the mutuality of like, we've got, both of us have something to gain. Out of this current situation, you have a need or a problem you need to need some help with. And you know, as a consultant, I'll get compensated for the work that I do to help you. And so there's a mutuality there. So that starts to diffuse the pushiness thing. It's like, I don't even have to be pushy. It's like, look, if, if they have a real need, if the need is real, then there's no need to be, I don't have to be pushy at all. It's just, you know, you know, and, and, and the only time you're gonna feel pushy is actually if their need doesn't exist.

John:

Well, that's why it's so important, but to focus on each link of the chain, like in, in succession, right? Like. You go into a certain, like you go into a discovery conversation, and if you fail to do the right level of discovery, then the follow up and reflecting your understanding has a higher chance of it, like not being right. And so if you're, building a house of cards, then of course your follow up is gonna sound or feel pushy because you're not in alignment.

Mark:

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good point. Good point. That, this whole pushy thing just sets me off because it's, it's like you said, it's, um, well, I'm gonna feel pushy. It's like, well, it sounds like to me that this is symptomatic of, you know, kind of a one-sided situation where they don't need, they don't need you, they don't need what you're selling, they don't want what you're selling. There's no pressing need. There's no,

John:

Or you don't understand the timeline, right? You don't understand how quickly they want to make a decision, and so if you're pressing for them to make a decision in a week when they wanna make a decision next quarter, that's gonna come across as pushy.

Mark:

Yeah. Great, great. I love that. So, yeah, so bad follow-up stuff. So feeling or being pushy is, you know, not good. The other thing I, I, I wrote here is I think bad follow-up, uh, is like just sending the brochure, right? I think there's a lot of times you'll have an initial conversation. Then your follow up is, you know, 10 words and a, and a and the glossy marketing brochure, which actually pushes the, progress way back. You lose everything that you've, that you've done to date, because now all of a sudden you start trying to market again. You know, and marketing is about building familiarity. It's about, you know, positioning. It's, it's all these things. So, yep. You throw out the brochure, I mean, it's after, it's after one of your sales call, initial sales call and be a qualification call or a discovery call, and you throw out the brochure, all of a sudden it, you shift back to marketing again.

John:

I love it. Well, mark, I think we've, uh, we've done a really great job at showing what good looks like for the, these sales follow up. what bad looks like.

Mark:

Yeah.

John:

we don't have to spend too much time on this because I know that the, like, sales follow up, that's such like a meaty topic, but. For quickly on the marketing side of things, I think like the, the goal of marketing follow up, and let's just assume that this is part of like an outbound outreach to prospects who fit your ideal client profile. The goal here is to build familiarity, to demonstrate relevance to your prospect, right? And then a key outcome of marketing outreach would be conversations. That lead to sales opportunities that could be, hey, I know a guy, you know, generating referrals or that prospect could be a potential fit for the services you offer. So I just wanna like lay the groundwork there.

Mark:

You and I talked about this, originally, and, and you know, I said, oh, this is, I don't necessarily put this in the category of fall. I put this in sort of, maybe this is an outreach sequence or something like that. and I think that it's used very commonly, you know, in, the, the heading of follow up. This Absolutely. Falls, falls under that for sure.

John:

Well, and, and what's kind of going through my head now that we've run through the sales outreach and some of the goals there, like reflecting, understanding right. Trying to get clarity and I think with this marketing outreach or prospecting, trying to generate leads and conversations, it is a lot of that, but it needs to be based on your understanding of the market and reflected back into maybe a bit more of generalized language. So, um, I've got some, good follow-ups, um, examples and I've got a good follow-up example and then a couple bad follow-ups. So I just wanted to quickly run through these.

Mark:

Yeah,

John:

So this, uh, this is a good one. This is from Brett, right? And he says, hi John. I noticed you are involved in podcasting, so I wanted to introduce you to brand our platform that grows real listeners for podcasts. Okay, cool. You know, podcasters are trying to grow their audience. I get it. We insert your podcast trailer into contextually relevant content on top tier digital sites. A little vague, but okay. I think I understand. Um, and then can I give you a demo or even send you some case studies? I did not respond to that.'cause I don't really need whatever he's, it's not very specific. Um, it's kind of a, it addressing a generalized problem. But what was interesting is that when he did follow up. He said, Hi John. Making sure you saw my email. I can share case studies on the thousand plus podcasts using it to grow real downloads, not bots for their podcasts and build up views and subscribers on their YouTube channel. And brand is monitored by CloudFlare and is completely IAB compliant. what I like about this follow up is that he pointed specifically to the thousand plus podcasts citing like a proof point in like social credibility. Not bots. I think this is key because there's a lot of, I get outreach all the time from people who are like, I can grow your listeners and downloads, and I'm like, yeah, it's because you've got a, a cell phone farm in China that's pressing play a bunch of times. Then the last part is that it's monitored by CloudFlare and is completely IAB compliant. The IAB compliant is critical because they look at podcast downloads through a more stricter lens and what counts and registers as a download. the advertisers look at that as like a standard in the industry. So I thought that was good follow up in the sense that. Brett really kind of understood what those pain points are and the technical like questions that I might have for his platform, and then he put those into his follow-up email.

Mark:

Good.

John:

I did not end up booking a call

Mark:

Uh. Oh, Brett. Oh, Brett. Yeah. The, this is good, but I appreciate the angle you that you're taking on this, in that I think that, this sequence gets a little bit more specific. It starts to call out some top of mind concerns that this person has, come across. in their work to, to do some lead generation work. and so yeah, I think it's, I think it's good and it's just specific enough where it's checking some check boxes in your head and you're thinking, oh, okay, yeah, this is, who knows what they're talking about. There's some credibility there.

John:

I want to contrast that mark with some really bad follow up examples.

Mark:

sure.

John:

Yeah, this, this, this will be fun. So this one's from Marco. Hey John. Noticed your Twitter profile and thought I'd reach out. I have software that's helping people scrape lots of email addresses from their target audience on Twitter slash x. Can I send over more info? Needless to say, I did not respond to that'cause I do not need anything like that. The follow up though, mark is the best. John? That's it.

Mark:

That was it?

John:

That was it.

Mark:

Just an your name with a question mark.

John:

That's it. Via email. He must have wanted to show me that he got my email with his scraper tool, and now he's following up with just my name and a question

Mark:

Huh? Wow.

John:

Oh, all right. Well, this next one I think is, is pretty bad too, but from a a in a few different ways. This is from Andrew, and this is on LinkedIn. Hi John. Thanks for connecting. Are you currently working with an accountant for red Cedar marketing? If not, or if you ever have any questions about booking, bookkeeping, payroll, or tax planning, feel free to reach out. Okay, cool. Now, I know Andrew offers accounting services, right? But his follow up is what got me. Hi John. Many founder and chief podcast officers I speak with say that working with accountants can be slow and frustrating. First of all, if there is another chief podcast officer out there, I wanna meet him

Mark:

Yeah. Who is that? That's a, yeah, that's a, an an

John:

Obviously he's scraping my profile and bringing in the title that I have on my, on my LinkedIn page in here. So I guess that's kind of like a quick tell. but his third note was, I thought was really bad as well. Hi John. I recently worked with a business owner who felt overwhelmed by their bookkeeping and tax prep. We listened carefully to their concerns, addressed the most urgent issues, and within weeks they had clean financial statements and peace of mind heading into tax season. This is a horrible story. It's all about him and it's not about his client. Hey, we helped a solo consultant who offers marketing services, save thousands of dollars on his, on his taxes. That would've been a little bit more applicable, but he made it about himself and not about his client.

Mark:

Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, it's tough John, and people get a lot of this stuff all the time. So it's, it's, um,

John:

But it's worth calling out Mark. I really think it is because there's so much garbage out there. And I think people are looking at AI as a, as a way to, scale outreach, but I think it's so obvious and it, it just comes across as it just rubs me the wrong way. Anyway, I'll

Mark:

Got it. No, No, you're, no, you're fine. You're fine. Your soapbox is good. one thing that, that, that crosses my mind here I called it out at the very beginning and I don't know if it's worth rehashing that

John:

Sure.

Mark:

is, uh, the magic email and if people want to go back and, you know, I've written about it and we've talked about it a little bit, but I put that in the category of follow up on a sales conversation, and I think that, uh, people should go and listen to that, that episode because the magic email is the thing that, brings some of these thready. new business opportunities that are just languishing there forever, maybe in your pipeline, maybe just, floating around, maybe just a casual conversation you have with somebody and it doesn't go anywhere. It brings those things to a close. So, that's a really important one as well. I don't know why I felt compelled to throw that in there, but I know we mentioned it first, first off, but it's a staple in my. Follow up, particularly with prospects that, I've had a conversation or two with, and things just go dark. so it's a, good one.

John:

Totally. If folks want to go listen to, I believe it's episode five and it. Checking in ghosting and the magic email. So check out that episode and listen to the other ones that are linked in the show notes. And Mark, this has been a fun conversation, talking about follow up Until next time.

Mark:

Until next time, John.

Head Shot

John Tyreman, Founder & CEO, Red Cedar Marketing

Co-host
Head Shot

Mark Wainwright, Principal Consultant and Founder, Wainwright Insight

Co-host