Your Follow-Up Is Why They Forgot You

You had a great conversation. You said you'd follow up. You sent "Great meeting you at XYZ — looking forward to staying connected." And then nothing. That message is the reason the relationship died. JP breaks down what a real follow-up looks like — the timing, the platform, the message — and how one detail from your conversation can do more than any template ever will.

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. And welcome back to a new Lead with Confidence. And next thing you know, the conversation you had at that networking event just goes away and disappears with no real substance from it. So we're diving in to how to follow up today effectively. And if you're just tuning in to lead with confidence, these are daily 10 minutes or less episodes to help you strengthen your soft skills abilities because that's how we connect. That's how we influence people. That's how we connect, grow, and kind of lead teams. That's through our soft skills, not our technical knowledge. That's 85% of our career success. And that's what we're diving into. So when you got the cards, you just had the networking event, how do you actually follow up effectively? A lot of times people go back and default to either number one, you just put the cards on your desk and they just kind of collect dust. I'm guilty of that. Or you actually do follow up, but chances are it might be a standard, very blanket. Hey, JP, great meeting you uh at this event. Uh, love to stay in touch or looking forward to staying connected. That goes into the forget you bucket because a lot of times that is such a standard response. A lot of people forget the conversation you had. So let's talk about actually how to dive in and really follow up a more effective way. Okay. So number one, it is you got to follow up within 48 hours. Okay. So that 48-hour window is crucial to follow up because you're still on their mind after that conversation. We talked about uh previously how to have better uh network, better conversations at networking events. Now we're talking about how to actually follow up better so those conversations stick. So within 48 hours, make sure you're following up, okay? Because you wait too long, they're gonna forget the conversation. And then again, they're you're not gonna be on the top of their mind to actually continue the conversation after you follow up. The second thing is don't do it via email. Uh I'm sorry, don't do it via LinkedIn. Obviously, I want you to connect with those people that you're meeting at networking events, but don't m send the message via LinkedIn. Send it via email. Have the email as kind of the home base because number one, that get you can provide uh you have their contact information, but also you're providing them your contact information, kind of makes it more official. Emails a lot more searchable, people respond to it, and people are always getting dinged uh on their phone with emails versus a LinkedIn uh outreach or stuff like that. So, number one, for first 48 hours is crucial. The second thing is follow up via email. All right. And the third thing is, and this is something we actually talked about in our previous uh episodes as well. So when you're in these conversations, you know, you're staying away from what do you do, uh, how are you, who do you work for, style questions, and you're really kind of diving in the book report method where you're actually learning about the person you're talking to. So the third piece to following up is reference a key point that y'all brought up during your conversation at the networking event, okay? So whether they liked podcasts, the the AI and whatever, and AI and engineering podcasts, right? Let's say they're really talking about AI and engineering, how it affects them and all this stuff. Reference that. Hey, listen, I just heard this great podcast about what we talked about. I want to share this with you, okay? And the fourth thing you have to do is understand the close that you want to do. Is this one of those things where you just want to meet this person, keep them on your radar, keep them in your network for future conversations? Or is it a person you want to talk to and actually carry on the conversation for that next step, for that coffee meeting? Okay. So understanding the two uh closers to your follow-up is important as well. If this is someone that it was just good to meet, you know, and it was a great conversation, and there's real no potential business or personal kind of uh interactions from that, just have that open, uh, open uh close, yeah, have that open closer uh saying, hey, listen, great meeting you. You're on my radar, I'd love to kind of have a further conversation next time we tag up, right? Or if you need that next step, if you need to further the conversation a little bit more, this is when you kind of say, hey, listen, based on our conversation, I'm kind of this is exactly the stuff that I do. I'd love 15 minutes of your time to have a cup of coffee and just kind of talk about this a little a little bit more, right? Again, that does not lead to pressure. You're not trying to pitch, you're not trying to close. And every time you're having a conversation with this person, don't think about you're trying to pitch or close a deal. All right. Think about what's what what conversation do we have to have to have that next conversation. So you're always thinking about that next meeting or that next conversation to have this person versus that transactional, hey, well, I want to work, but I want to close this deal. Okay. So first four to eight hours is crucial. Number two, lead with your email. Number three, reference a point of the conversation that they brought up. So whether it's something personal about them, or maybe they kind of talked about the challenge, maybe they talked about the speaker and they're really like they love the speaker at this networking event, right? Maybe you can share something with them from the speaker from a previous event or something like that. And again, when you're asking for a close to follow up, understand, hey, this is just a great person to be on my radar, or I want to continue this conversation a little bit more down the road. All right. So I think um, let's see. Yeah. So I would say this before you write that email, understand the clothes first and then lead with some uh don't copy and paste follow-up messages because it's people understand that people are seeing through that more now than they previously have. I would say stay away from the AI follow-up message and lead with your human side, your HI, your human intelligence, okay? Even if some grammar mistakes in there, people are gonna dive into that a little bit more than an AI uh generated prompt. So that's what we have uh on today's lead with confidence. We're talking about networking. We uh we just wrapped up a couple episodes on networking, and we're gonna be talking that about that for the next two or three episodes. So thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this, feel free to go out there and share it, comment, or leave a review or something like that. I love seeing people uh share this and download it, just kind of helps them in their careers. So thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you soon. That's your framework for the day. Go lead with it. I'm JP Warren, lead with confidence.