There is always economic uncertainty. There is always increasing competition in just about every industry sector.
Those two sentences have been true for every year of the twenty-plus years New Era has been in business. They will be true for every year that follows. Economic uncertainty and competitive pressure are not temporary conditions to be waited out. They are the permanent landscape in which every business operates.
Which makes the question that follows them all the more important.
How do we set ourselves apart from almost all the competition? How do we deliver a service to our clients that exceeds their expectations?
The answer is by following up: avidly, enthusiastically, and consistently.
The investment that doesn’t reach the finish line #
Here is what makes the follow-up gap genuinely puzzling, and why the urgency behind this piece is real rather than rhetorical.
The people who don’t follow up consistently are not, in the main, lazy or indifferent. They are busy, expert, and genuinely committed to serving their clients well. They have invested considerable time, money, and energy becoming experts in their field. They have invested considerable time, money, and energy developing their product or service proposition. They understand their market. They know their clients’ challenges. They care about the outcome.
And then they send the quote or the proposal and stop.
Think about what that means in practice. A quote sent to help a client comply with a statutory Health and Safety requirement. Vitally important work. Potentially a life or death situation. And the follow-up, the gentle reminder that the promise has been fulfilled and the client has everything they need to make a decision, never arrives.
The investment in expertise reaches the quote. It doesn’t reach the finish line.
The knowing-doing gap #
Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton wrote about this phenomenon in their landmark book The Knowing-Doing Gap, identifying one of the most consistent and costly patterns in organisational behaviour: the gap between what people know they should do and what they actually do.
Their research found that companies and individuals consistently fail to implement the experience and insight they have worked hard to acquire, not because they lack the knowledge, but because knowledge alone is rarely sufficient to produce sustained action. Plans, analysis, meetings, and presentations become substitutes for action rather than precursors to it. The “smart talk trap”; the tendency to mistake discussing what should be done for actually doing it, is one of the most reliably observed patterns in professional life.
The follow-up gap is a specific and very common manifestation of the knowing-doing problem. Almost everyone in business knows they should follow up more consistently. Almost everyone agrees that the follow-up is where the relationship is built and where the business is ultimately won. And most people still don’t do it systematically because knowing what to do is a categorically different thing from having a system that ensures it gets done.
The spanner in the works #
The reason is not mysterious. Other duties and life in general interfere with an effective and consistent follow-up programme. This is not an excuse, it is an accurate description of what happens when important but not urgent activities compete with urgent but not important ones.
The follow-up call to check on a proposal sent three weeks ago is important. It is rarely urgent in the immediate sense that a client complaint, a supplier problem, or an unexpected request are urgent. And so it gets deferred, not consciously, not deliberately, but consistently enough that months pass and the proposal sits unanswered in someone’s inbox while the business that sent it has moved on to chasing new prospects.
Research published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology in 2024 found that implementation intentions: specific pre-decided plans for when, where, and how to perform a behaviour, significantly increase the frequency of that behaviour and accelerate its development into automatic habit. The key mechanism is that implementation intentions transfer control of the behaviour from conscious deliberation to environmental cue, removing the decision-making friction that causes most follow-up to die quietly between intentions.
In plain language: the people who follow up consistently are not the ones with more willpower or more motivation. They are the ones with better systems.
The system that makes consistency possible #
The most effective way to close the knowing-doing gap in follow-up is to build a system that removes the decision about whether to follow up from the daily to-do list entirely.
The best long-term solution is a properly integrated Customer Relationship Management system; one that holds the contact history, the diarised call-backs, the notes from every previous conversation, and the next action for every relationship in the pipeline. The key word is “integrated” rather than “purchased.” A CRM that sits unused on a subscription is not a system. It is an expensive reminder of good intentions.
But until a CRM is fully integrated into the organisation’s daily rhythm, a start can be made today. A follow-up call and email rota built into an electronic calendar is not sophisticated. It is not rocket science. But as a first step, it will do the trick, because it transfers the follow-up decision from memory and motivation to system and schedule. The calendar tells you who to call. You make the call. The knowing-doing gap closes by one contact.
Why this is competitive advantage #
Here is the genuine opportunity that the follow-up gap creates, and it is considerable.
Most of your competitors will not follow up consistently. They will make the initial contact, perhaps one follow-up, and then move on; assuming the prospect wasn’t interested, or that they will be in touch when they are ready. This is what the majority do. Which means that consistent, enthusiastic, well-judged follow-up is not just good practice. It is a genuine differentiator in a crowded market.
John C. Maxwell observed that diligent follow-up and follow-through will set you apart from the crowd and communicate excellence. Notice that he doesn’t say it sets you apart because your product is superior, or your price is more competitive, or your brand is better known. It sets you apart because you do consistently what most others do sporadically or not at all.
The basic service is to deliver a quote or proposal. To go above and beyond is to contact clients afterwards; as a gentle reminder, at the very least, that you have fulfilled your promise and that you are still there, still interested, still available.
Please, please follow up.
If you need help and support putting an effective follow-up process in place, let’s have a conversation.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
Medium: https://medium.com/@richard-bulldomican
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbulldomican/
