The Follow-up: A key technique for relaunching prospects

Perhaps you’ve already heard of “follow-up”, the technique used by professionals when it comes to following up a prospect? If not, VKARD has put together an overview of this very popular skill!

The art of follow-up, a must for effective prospect follow-up!

Taking part in professional events is an excellent way of creating opportunities and enriching your network! In the professional arena, it’s vital to be able to handle your exchanges with care, but that’s not all! If a successful business meeting is the first step in creating a bond between you and your prospect, it’s essential not to stop there. At VKARD, we can help you master the technique of follow-up, a skill that can help you turn a simple meeting into a fruitful relationship!

Wherever you meet your prospect, it’s important to follow up strategically, so that he doesn’t forget you.

There are many ways to follow up your prospect, but sending personalized e-mails or LinkedIn messages 48 hours after the event are among the most popular.

How to follow up successfully

There are several ways to successfully follow up!

• Show up quickly after the exchange
• Personalize your follow-up
• Remind them of the event you attended
• Show your interest in the exchange
• Demonstrate your professionalism

Act quickly after the exchange

To stay in your prospect’s memory and capitalize on your exchange, it’s important to act quickly afterwards! In fact, we advise you not to allow too much time to elapse after the meeting before making your follow-up contact. Ideally, so that your contact remembers you well, you can send your follow-up message within 48 hours of the event and your connected business card exchange… or not :-).

Personalize your follow-up message

It’s also important to personalize your follow-up message according to the discussions you had during the meeting with your prospect. To show your contact that you’ve taken your exchange into consideration, don’t hesitate to address specific points discussed with him/her.

Another way of personalizing your follow-up message is to express your interest in the exchange, for example, by asking questions or mentioning your prospect’s needs.

If you choose to use an e-mail platform like Brevo, you can personalize your message in a ” classic ” way, such as: Dear “First name”.
Other platforms, such as LemList, also let you attach a personalized image. Imagine sending a screenshot of your SaaS solution with company info in the image. Doesn’t this personalization really stand out?

Show your professionalism

Follow-up is a subtle art that requires a certain professionalism. In fact, it’s important to put in place certain behaviors conducive to follow-up, such as writing a clear message that gets straight to the point. Your interlocutor’s time is precious: make sure that your message is fluid and efficient to read, but also skilfully worded and free of spelling mistakes.

Don’t be discouraged!

Your first steps in the follow-up process may not have been fruitful: you didn’t get a response to your first follow-up message? Have your follow-up attempts been in vain despite your best efforts? Don’t be discouraged, and continue to follow up with a courteous reminder a few weeks after your exchange.

While perseverance often pays off, it’s important to remain respectful! Avoid becoming insistent, as this could irritate your prospect and become counter-productive!

How does the art of follow-up work with contacts you’ve never met?

On LinkedIn, it’s perfectly possible to use the “follow-up” technique with people you haven’t yet met. How does it work?

Have you spotted a contact with whom you think you can exchange ideas and create a stable professional relationship or new opportunities? Then all you have to do is ask this contact for a LinkedIn connection by making a suggestion.

To interest your future contact, write a clear, engaging message to make your contact want to find out more about you or what you’re offering. If the contact doesn’t get back to you, as a first step, don’t hesitate to send an InMail (if you have the Premium version of the tool), which enables you to send an e-mail to a person who is not on your contact list) to follow up.

Use automatic follow-up tools

Relaunching a contact manually can be a time-consuming task, but it can be automated for greater convenience! To do this, there are tools available to automatically manage connections on LinkedIn, e-mails or voicemails, for example.

These tools require upstream programming of your leads, but will enable you to automate your follow-up messages in a simplified and efficient way, saving precious time!

Follow-up is a very popular and effective technique for transforming simple business meetings into collaborative opportunities.

This method, much appreciated by many professionals, is designed to help you build up your network of contacts in a simple and effective way! Thanks to follow-up techniques, boost your relationships and your business in just a few clicks!