What Networking Follow Ups Really Cost You

It is important for a business owner to be aware of what he does at events when prospecting. Not only is following up vital to increasing business, who and how he follows up also affects the results he or she gets in the end.

Are follow-ups necessary for networking?

Isn’t it enough to meet people and exchange namecards? The short answer:

No.

When you only meet people and exchange namecards, you’re basically just contributing to global warming. No one values a namecard or a once-off meeting- it just doesn’t work that way.

You need follow-ups to get most of the value (in terms of referrals, leads, partnerships, awareness) from your networking time investment.

Networks are built on goodwill, and goodwill comes through follow-ups

Networks are built through the goodwill bank, and referrals and partnerships come from either a strong need / value fit, or a continuous buildup of rapport, reciprocity or influence (by the six influence sources).

Follow ups cost more time & money than you think

Every followup has major time and coordination costs associated with it. A meeting with someone requires not just the 1–3 hours for the interaction itself, but buffer times before and after to avoid schedule conflicts, as well as transport time and costs of entertainment.

Follow-Up Meeting Real Cost Card: $95.50 / meeting

Time cost: $80.50
1.5 hours meeting time

1.5 hours travel and buffer time

0.5 hours follow-up (emails, goodwill banking etc.)

$10 ENT (F&B)

$5 transport

Real Cost: $95.50 / follow-up meeting

Strength: Highest touch. Great for starting new relationships, anchoring initial brief meetings, starting partnerships, lead qualification, asking for cool referrals, good for goodwill seed questioning

Weakness: Expensive, time-consuming, disruptive to schedules, non-scalable, slight difficulty in training new staff to execute properly, opportunity cost due to limited capacity to meet people

With follow-ups costing you $95.50 or more per meeting, a proper plan and target set of demographics is vital to effective running of your networking strategy and sales team.

Further, since a sales team capacity is limited by nature, in that it does not scale effortlessly vs. digital and remote methods, it is doubly important to ensure proper targeting of follow-ups.

So, now that you have established that follow-ups are necessary to ensure your networking investment is secure, how do you ensure that your follow-ups are well targeted?

A simple 5-step framework from ThunderQuote helps you or your salespeople to make decisions on which ones are worth following up on:

IDEAL 5 Step Framework For Evaluating Potential Followups
(I, D, E, A, L)

1. Ideal client profile: First, is the person part of your ideal client profile?
2. Decision power: Is the person a decision maker, and has the autonomy to make decisions affecting his or her parent organisation?
3. Extent of influence: Is the person able to exert influence over key partners or decision makers, or over the community?
4. Authority: Is the person viewed as an authority or expert in this field?
5. Links to influencers or decision makers: Does the person have links to decision makers, influencers or authorities in your field?

The more points the person scores in IDEAL, the higher the follow-up priority. If the person scores a zero in IDEAL, then you really should question yourself if it’s worth following up with this particular profile, or if your time and that of your people would be better spent elsewhere.

Kevin Ng is Managing Director of Thunderquote.com , ASEAN’s one-stop e-sourcing & procurement marketplace for businesses, with automated buyer guidance for project scoping and market rate data. Thus, ThunderQuote generates genuine, high-intent and qualified leads for business owners and salespeople.