NURTURE: Follow Up after the Follow Up

There’s a great book called I’m at a Networking Event — Now What??? (the ebook is $11.95)

Also, Thom Singer is writing about this topic because he just got back from mega-networking event SXSW.  Thom has written a bunch of books on networking and and lives/breathes/eats networking.

He wrote a post titled Follow Up Is The Key To Successful Networking – SXSW Interactive 2010.

I agree with Thom’s post and the 5 suggestions and one challenge in the post.

My first reaction to reading that was “HELLO!  That’s where JibberJobber comes in – to help you with the follow up!”

My second reaction was new, though.

Many times we follow up, which is great, and as Keith Ferrazzi says, makes us better than 95% of everyone else.

But then we FAIL, since we don’t follow up anymore.

If we only follow up once, and never again, we have failed.

Let me change the idea of “follow up” to “nurture the relationship.”  Because that’s what I really want to do. I want to nurture our new relationship and make it stronger and better.  And this happens as we communicate and learn and help and ask and share.

You can call it follow up, if you want, but that starts to sound like a lot of work only to keep yourself on a radar and wonder if there are any scraps of opportunity to pick up every once in a while.

I prefer to think about NURTURING the relationship.

Now JibberJobber (or any CRM) becomes absolutely critical.

If you aren’t on it now, get on it.  Take baby steps.  Really work on nurturing professional relationships.

It might not pay off today, or tomorrow, but it can pay off during the rest of your career.