The Follow-Up Is Where Small Talk Actually Pays Off — Here's How to Do It Right

Most people have a great conversation and then ghost it forever. The follow-up is where small talk becomes a relationship, a referral, or a real opportunity — and almost nobody does it well. JP breaks down a simple system for following up in a way that feels personal, not salesy, and actually makes the other person glad to hear from you.

Transcript

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Welcome to Lee with Confidence. I'm JP Warren. Every episode we take a theme from our Monday morning leadership call and apply it to real life scenarios. So you can build your confidence, crush your imposter syndrome, and step into the leader you actually want to be. Short, real, straight to the point. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Lead with Confidence. I'm your host, JP Warren. In 10 minutes or less, I'm going to give you some real-world frameworks to utilize so you can level up your soft skills in your personal and professional life. Why? Because it's 85% of our career success. That's how we communicate, connect, and influence with others. And that's what we're here to do today. In return, I would love it if you could take 15 seconds, go over, leave a review, leave a comment, share with others who may need help developing their soft skills. So we're actually coming up and wrapping up this the small talk conversation of these. If you go back to the previous episodes, we covered small talk, right? We covered how to actually work on your small talk, why it's so important, actually how to get those reps in before the networking events. So now we're talking about the art of following up. This is the biggest gap in actually how people can benefit from these networking events. And I've in this episode today, we're gonna give you actual frameworks on actually how to follow up a lot differently than how you've been doing or how everyone else is doing, right? The worst thing you can do is walk out of a networking event with a stack of cards, whether it's a stack, you know, a big stack of cards or a couple cards, and follow up generically, and you're just gonna be dropped in the bucket like you were there talking to them, but you really weren't connecting. So let's dive in on actually how to follow up effectively. We're adding value and further in the conversation than cutting it off. Okay. So a lot of times we go to networking events, we get these cards, and we send up these blanket, blanket statement follow-ups that actually just don't really move the needle forward. And in fact, it's kind of like, okay, well, I got their con, I feel like it's more of a contact information. Like I got a card on my desk, I'm gonna shoot them a note so they have my contact information, and hopefully something happens. Here, I out of everything, I wanted, I want you to understand this. Your initial follow-up should not be the pitch, okay? It should not be trying to close a deal or to get their to get their work or anything like that. Let's talk about actually how to follow up effectively, okay? The past couple episodes, we actually talked about actually how to dive deeper on conversations versus the how are you doing, where do you work, style conversations, and actually connect with them. So at these events, I encourage you, whenever we do have these conversations that are a lot deeper than these transactional conversations, obviously we need to actively listen. I encourage you to have five minutes at the end of these networking events to take these cards of people that you remember talking to and jot down quick little summaries, what you talked about, right? It doesn't have to be a lot. It could be JP, leadership, soft skills. That's it. Okay. So start putting down details of the people that you meet. Okay. That's number one. That shows that you're actually listening, you're actually present. Okay. So when you're actually reaching out to connect with them, all right, you have some information. Okay, so I'm gonna give you a little example and we're gonna kind of walk through this. So at networking events, what I often do, I won't talk about, you know, you know, where do you work or what do you do or anything like that? I'll often kind of uh bring up kind of like, hey, common struggles. Hey, how long did it take you to get here? Were you stuck in traffic? Oh, you were? Oh, what you know, what kind of traffic, you know, what do you do when you're stuck in traffic? Are you a podcast person? Are you an audio book? Are you a music person? No, once you start understanding what they do on their time off, away from the office, kind of in their own time, you can start kind of understanding what kind of uh motivators they have, what interests they have, and kind of what's what they get into on their off time, right? So let's say I'm at this convert, I'm having this conversation. They say, oh, they're really into uh AI when it comes to uh their job, right? Whatever their job is. Oh, I'm I'm I've been listening to this podcast about, you know, AI, how it affects my job or how it could benefit my job. Perfect. Got that. JP, AI podcast, okay? So in the initial email, I'll get back and I'll respond. And this is this is kind of how you got to craft it, okay? You're not going there to have a transactional conversation. What you're trying to do there is further the conversation. Every conversation you have with this, with your target person you're trying to actually build the relationship with, it should never be a transactional ask. It should never be, let's get, you know, uh, can I get this work? Or are you, can I, you know, could I sit down and talk to you about solving your problems? Because all you're doing, you're turning into a pitch, and that's gonna put a lot of people's walls up. So get the detailed information on kind of, you know, what they're doing, whether whether it's I'm using the example of traffic, but get some information about them. Okay. So in your follow-up email, in your follow-up uh communication with them, number one, you want to lead with the detail, not the pitch. That actually shows you were listening. So, hey, John, uh great meeting you at that last networking event. Yeah, so uh I just, you know, it's interesting that you like AI when it as it relates to your job. Hey, have you checked out this podcast I just listened to this week about AI, you know, what we're talking about as a results, as it applies to your job, check it out. Just send them the link, send them a podcast, send them a book. It doesn't matter what you send, but don't send a transactional request. All you're doing is showing that you were listening and that you're again, you're building that bridge. So share with them a resource, share with them something that you kind of connected on and talked about. All right. The second thing is add value before you ask for anything. So if they're talking about, like, you know, my kid's in football right now, and uh, you know, this we have the season close, you know, the season closing game, you know, next week or something like that. Follow up. Ask them about that. Hey, how'd your son's uh uh football game go? Uh, how'd the season end up? How'd it wind up, right? So again, you're showing that you were listening and engaged in that and you're not talking about work. So you're creating a safety area, a safety zone with this person in y'all's communication. They're thinking, okay, this person's not out there to pitch me. This person is not out there to have these transactional conversations. This person was actually listening. And not only that, they actually care. Okay. And when you're doing this, it just kind of furthers the a lot of times when people email people, it goes in like the email, uh, there's no email inbox equity. So they're not going to respond back. If you start sharing a podcast, if you start asking about kind of the their families or personal details, kind of the stuff you talked about, that just builds the bond right there. Okay. And then at the end of it, at the end of this email and all that stuff, again, it's you're not asking for the close. All you're trying to do in this email is to further the conversation. I often talk about this when I work with sales teams. Whenever you go in there for a pitch, you're not trying to close the deal. All you're trying to do is get that next meeting. All you're trying to do is get that next uh step in the right direction to build that bridge between your two companies or your you two as individuals. Okay. So maybe it could be like, hey, listen, if you enjoyed this, I got a couple other things I could send your way that I think you really enjoy. You start doing that more and more, it's just gonna build trust, and your chances to get a meeting with them, a lunch, or a coffee is gonna be exponentially higher. All right. So the next networking event you're at, number one, give yourself bacon about five minutes right there to kind of go in a private room and kind of just jot down on the back of people's cards and maybe some information you learned about them. All right. That way you're not gonna get in your car and you're like, oh, I'll do this later, and you forget. Okay. So the second thing is when you do follow up, don't make it transactional. Add value. Hey, John, it was great meeting you. I hears a podcast about, you know, the uh the the AI as a results to your job. I think you'd find interesting. Um, there's a whole slew of these things. I got a, I got, you know, audio, I have an audio book that also relates to this. Let me know if you want me to send that over. By the way, uh, how'd your son's game go? Uh did they win? Did they lose? Um, hope you had a hope you had a great day. It was great connecting with you, JP, right? That again creates that safety zone where you're not coming across like a transaction, you're not coming across like a pitch because a lot of people don't like being sold to. Actually, majority of people don't like being sold to. So their walls are up. You start establishing that foundation, you start connecting with them on the personal side of things, it's gonna be much more fruitful for you. So that's what we have for this Lead with Confidence podcast. I encourage you, go out there, have better follow-ups, have better conversations, listen more, put your phones away and have a good time following up because again, it's not one of those things, and it's fun, it's interesting too. A lot of industries, it's usually like people understand that, oh, we're relationships uh in we're a relationship um heavy industry, right? So sales will, it's it's relationships, right? However, the direction is often like, oh, you met with this person for the second meeting. Did you sell to them? This is something that's just gonna take time. It could take months, it could take years, but at the end of the day, you are building a much more fruitful and impactful network for you. Doesn't matter if you're at your current company or in the future, you're actually building real relationships, and that's what matters. So thank you for tuning in today and hope you have a great day, and we'll see you tomorrow. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.