This is a great question, if only because it makes you cock your head to the side and go “what?”
This is more of a metaphor. And it is tied to a specific passage written by Og Mandino and a specific skill you will ultimately master.
It has been said over and over that “the fortune is in the follow up.” There is definitely some truth to that, but of course the fortune is also in the approaching and presenting and the serving, etc. If you don’t approach (make contacts) then you can’t make a fortune through follow up because there is no one to follow up on!
Anyway, where this rings true is that the people who diligently and professionally follow-up are massively more successful than those that don’t. This has been where I made my fortune. Being an introvert by nature, the hardest part for me was always the front side, which is what I call making the approach (contact). I learned to master that skill by doing it so many times I overcame my reluctance through sheer repetition.
people who diligently and professionally follow-up are massively more successful than those that don’t
As a natural introvert, it was easy to develop my relational skills by building on my listening tendency. Once I am in a conversation, this is where I can really be effective. So, all I ever cared about in the approach was getting the conversation initiated and have information get into the prospects hands so that I had the beginning part of the bridge built. Through consistent follow up everything else happens naturally. I teach in The Process to be nice, honest, respectful, and never pressure. This allows you to easily follow up all the time and forever. People aren’t afraid of you and hence they get real which makes doing business easy and natural.
There is a section in The Process where I talk specifically about how good and consistent follow up shines the light of credibility on you and makes people trust you to do business with. But for here let me just marry the home for a tree piece to the follow up.
good and consistent follow up shines the light of credibility on you
At the end of Chapter 13 of The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino’s famous book (which I have read over and over for 20+ years) you will find these words:
“No longer will I judge a man on one meeting; no longer will I fail to call again tomorrow on he who meets me with hate today. This day he will not buy gold chariots for a penny, yet tomorrow he would exchange his home for a tree.”
You’re not the only one that has ups and downs, good days and bad days, changes of mind, changes in circumstances, changes of heart, epiphanies, awakenings, acquisition of new information. You aren’t the only one who wakes up each morning with a different feeling from the day before. Every time you make a follow up it is a new situation from the last time regardless of what is communicated to you. Your prospect might not be ready to act again, but the situation is definitely different. You are different. You are more experienced. You have more credibility. You have more discernment. You have more customers and business partners in your business. They are also different in a myriad of ways.
I have sponsored too many people to count in my career who were not very interested at first. Remember, that professional follow-up. It is expected. So do it consistently and you will know exactly what I mean.
