The Follow Up Trick That Keeps Prospects Thinking About You

Good Morning. Happy Cinco de Mayo. Fun fact: this isn't really a major holiday in Mexico. It's basically a US celebration that beer brands turned into a marketing event in the 1980s. Enjoy the margaritas tonight, but maybe finish your calls and emails first. Quota doesn't take holidays, and doesn't accept "I had too many margs last night" as an excuse. Now, let's get into today's Follow Up. (:

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Play along with me for a second here.

Imagine you just had a great discovery call. I'm talking about the kind of call you're buzzing from afterwards, because everything went exactly how you wanted.

The prospect was engaged, asked questions, talked about timelines, and even laughed at your extremely mediocre jokes.

So you do what you always do.

You send the follow up. Full recap. Deck attached. Next steps confirmed. Every question answered.

Two days go by. Nothing. You send a bump. Still nothing. You start wondering what went wrong.

Nothing went wrong on the call, and you didn’t leave any loose ends.

And that might be the problem. You gave them no reason to come back to you.

There's a psychology concept that explains how you can use this to your advantage.

In 1927, a psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik found a phenomenon happening in a Berlin restaurant.

The waiters could recall every single detail of an open order. But the moment the check was paid, they lost all memory.

As soon as the order was complete, their brain moved on.

She also tested it in a lab. Participants were given a series of tasks, and some were interrupted before they could finish. When asked to recall the tasks later, people were twice as likely to remember the ones they hadn't completed.

A related finding, called the Ovsiankina Effect, also found that people not only remember incomplete tasks, but they also feel a psychological pull to go back and finish them. That pull is what makes cliffhangers work. And it's what can make your follow-ups work too.

The hack for using this is simple. Intentionally leave one thread hanging.

I did this with a prospect last month, and had them emailing me about an open item. Imagine that…

The easiest way to do this is the "let me check with my team" move. When a prospect asks something you don't know the answer to, resist the urge to guess or figure it out on the spot. Say "That's a great question. Let me check with my team and get you the right answer assap." Now they're waiting on something specific from you.

The loop is open, and you have a built-in reason to follow up that doesn't feel like a sales touch.

You can also leave open items for your prospect, but know that you need to own them. They're not going to chase down the security questionnaire or loop in their IT lead because it's on your mutual checklist. They'll do it if you stay on top of it. Send the reminder. Make it easy. Give them the exact thing they need to get it done.

The key is that every open thread should create a reason for the next conversation to happen. Whether it's something you owe them or something they owe you, someone has to come back to close the loop.

The easiest place to use this is in the follow up. Instead of a complete recap, end with something that creates anticipation. "I'm pulling some data on how this played out for a similar company. I'll have it for you by Tuesday."

Short, specific, and unfinished.

It also works on calls. When you're wrapping up a discovery call, and the prospect is clearly engaged, resist the urge to cover every topic. Leave one area unexplored and say something like "There's something I want to dig into next time around [specific topic]. I think it's going to change how you're thinking about this."

That gives them a reason to show up to the next call beyond just obligation. This technique lets you pace the conversation so there's always something to come back to.

Check out The Follow Up Guy on LinkedIn.