The second and third follow-up

The problem it solves

The quote goes out on Tuesday, and on Thursday somebody calls once, leaves a message, and there the whole thing stops. The conversation stays pending inside one person's head, with no date and no owner, and over the following weeks it becomes one of those accounts described as having gone cold, as though cooling were a weather event.

Two habits hold the pattern in place. The first is waiting for the client: calling again with no fresh news feels like a nuisance, so everyone waits for a signal that rarely comes. The second is never closing anything. Since no opportunity is ever formally declared over, the list of what is open mixes live conversations with ones that died months ago, and nobody can look at that list and decide anything from it.

So the company pays to create interest and then abandons it one step short of the decision. It also learns nothing, because the client who went quiet is never asked, and the real reason, which was often a small and answerable doubt, never reaches anyone. And when a salesperson leaves, their open conversations leave with them, since those conversations only ever existed in their memory and their phone.

What it covers

Before any of the cadence work, there is an uncomfortable inventory to do. Each participant writes out their real open conversations and gives each one the two things it almost never has: a person responsible and a date for the next contact. The exercise immediately shows how many were open only in appearance, how many share an owner without anyone having decided that, and how many have been stalled so long that restarting them needs a different conversation altogether.

The second part sets the cadence. How many attempts before an opportunity is declared closed, how far apart they sit, and through which channel, separating what a client experiences as persistence from what they experience as attention. The group discusses why a rhythm agreed in advance outperforms individual instinct, particularly in a heavy week, when follow-up is the first thing to fall off the list.

The third part is the core of the session: the follow-up with no news. What justifies the contact when there is nothing to announce, which might be a question that helps the client decide, something relevant to their situation, a real deadline approaching, or a next step smaller than the one proposed before. Participants rehearse it in pairs, including the version where the client answers that they still have not decided anything.

The closing section deals with endings. The criterion for declaring an opportunity over, the closing message, which reopens the conversation often enough to be worth writing carefully, and the difference between the client who said no and the client who stopped replying, who are not handled the same way. The group also settles how open conversations are handed over when the person changes, and what the weekly review looks like: short, with the list in front of everyone, producing decisions rather than a report.

What participants learn

• Define what counts as an open conversation and give each one an owner and a date for the next contact.
• Design a follow-up cadence with a number of attempts, the spacing between them and the channel.
• Develop a follow-up that gives the client something when there is no news to report.
• Evaluate when an opportunity is closed and say so without damaging the relationship.
• Implement the handover of open conversations when the person handling them changes.

Agenda

1. 01What counts as an open opportunity and what does not
2. 02An owner for the conversation and a date for the next contact
3. 03The follow-up with no news: what makes the call worth making
4. 04How many attempts, how far apart, through which channel
5. 05Closing an opportunity out instead of carrying it indefinitely
6. 06The client who said no and the client who stopped replying
7. 07Handing over conversations when the salesperson changes
8. 08A short weekly review of what is open, ending in decisions

What the organisation leaves with

• A written cadence rule: how many attempts, how far apart and through which channel.
• Three follow-ups drafted for real open conversations the company currently has.
• A close-out criterion, together with the message sent when an opportunity is declared over.
• A short weekly review agenda for open conversations, with the decisions it has to produce each time.