In this short monologue, Nicolas Cole debunks the common fear that following up with a prospect is annoying. He argues that 99% of the time a follow‑up is seen as helpful because busy decision‑makers are often distracted by other priorities. Cole illustrates the point with a realistic scenario: a client receives a pitch, gets busy with a phone call, texts, Slack messages, dinner, and sleep, and simply forgets to reply. Without a follow‑up, the prospect is unlikely to remember the offer; a brief reminder two days later can easily revive the conversation. Cole emphasizes that the worst outcome—being told you’re annoying—occurs in a minuscule fraction of cases and has no real negative impact. The overall message is that the low risk and high upside of follow‑ups make them a simple, essential habit for salespeople.
Chapters
99% of the time when you follow up with someone, you are not being seen as annoying. You're actually being seen as helpful. The client is not bothered. The client is actually appreciative. Let's say that you all pitched me on, "Hey Cole, I would love to help you scale your Start Writing Online newsletter. I would love to take it over for you. I'll run the whole thing. Here are all the things I can take off your plate." And I email you back and I go, "That's such funny timing. I was actually just thinking of finding someone to help us scale up this newsletter. This is exactly what I'm looking for." And then you respond and you go, "Great. When do you want to chat?" And I don't get back to you. What do you think happened? Do you think I suddenly decided that you were unqualified? Do you think that I decided I actually hate you? I'll tell you exactly what happened. You emailed me saying, "When do you wanna chat?" And I read the email, but then at the same time, my mom called me. And then as soon as I got off the phone with my mom, I realized that I had 7 unanswered texts. And then when I went to the 7 texts, I'm meanwhile getting pinged in Slack. And then I'm like, "Oh wait, there was a Slack I forgot to get back to." And then I click on that. And the next thing you know, I'm cooking dinner. And the next thing you know, I'm asleep. And then it's tomorrow. I just described every business owner on earth. The person is not sitting there thinking, "Wow, can you believe this person for being so annoying?" They just got busy. And so you have to remember that you following up is not you being annoying. You following up is actually helping them. Because if you don't follow up with me in this scenario, do you think that 4 days later I'm going to block my morning to think about, "Oh yeah, I remember that person pitched me last week. I should probably block some time to get back to them." No, I am not going to do that. But if you follow up with me 2 days later and I wake up the next morning and at the top of my list my inbox, you're like, "Hey, just wanted to make sure you saw this." What's the likelihood that I go, "Oh yeah, yeah, sorry, I forgot about this. Sure, let's talk." This is one of those things that is so incredibly simple and yet the vast majority of people don't do it because they're afraid of something happening that isn't real. Even if someone emails you back and says, "You're being annoying," what is the worst thing that happens? You have an email that says you're being annoying. Does your life change? No. Did you lose a ton of money? No. Is anything different in your life? No. The only thing that's different is you now have an email in your inbox that says you are annoying, which Which, by the way, happens 1% of 1% of the time.
