Let’s walk through a three-step process to create a follow-up email with these three sections. A “Common Ground Reference” component, and.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about … How to Write a Great Follow-Up EmailĪn effective follow-up email has three components: All you’ve got to do is personalize it once the meeting wraps up. Once you’ve got this email sitting in your drafts folder, it’s hard to forget to send it. I enjoyed our meeting very much and look forward to meeting you again. Here’s an example of what this email draft might look like:
You can always flesh it out after the meeting. Obviously this draft can’t be too specific or detailed since it’s being written before the meeting is taking place, but that’s okay. If you’re ready to commit to this habit again, here’s a quick tip to streamline the process and make it easier to remember to send those emails, no matter what happens: Create a follow-up email draft before the meeting. Sound familiar? It’s the classic story of well-intentioned habits being crushed before they’re fully-formed. The crisis ends, but the emails don’t begin again. You invest all of your time and energy into resolving the crisis and, as a result, forget about sending follow-up emails. But then something happened a crisis arose. In fact, it probably isn’t even the first time you’ve tried to make this practice into a habit.Īnd the first couple days of your initial attempt probably went really well. This probably isn’t the first time you’ve thought about sending follow-up emails. Why Most People Fail to Consistently Send Follow-up Emails
Think of sending follow-up emails as one of those small extra steps that can make the difference between victory and defeat.īesides, when you look at the minimal time and energy investment involved in writing a follow-up email to your meetings, it’s really a no-brainer: If you want to fully leverage the power of your network, you need to send follow-up emails. This is especially true if you’re competing in a commoditized market where the difference between you and your competitor is marginal. Like baseball, network relationship management is a game of inches where the difference between winning and losing is rarely decided by grand gestures more often than not, the winner is the person who took the small extra steps. If you’re going to invest 30-60 minutes in meeting with someone, you owe it to yourself and whoever you met with to send a follow-up email.