The Art of Follow-Up: Building Systems To Stay In Touch

follow-up. But ask yourself this question: are you really doing the follow-up? And maybe the answer is no, and that's why you're in the right place at the right time. This is Cash In On Camera, and I'm your host Cheryl Plouffe. I have, um, Adrian Chenault is here with us today from Contact Mapping because we want to talk about following up and really the art of following up. So Adrian, so great to have you here. Do you feel that enough entrepreneurs, coaches, and consultants are doing follow-up the really the way that they should or to the level that they should?

You know, certainly not. And not for lack of— no, you know, we all know that saying, right? That the fortune is in the follow-up. And so I get it because it came, you know, creating the company Contact Mapping really came from this place of understanding that it isn't easy, even though we know that that really is where the fortune is. And so no, it's not being done well, and I hope we can help.

What are, what are the biggest mistakes that people are making when it comes to following up?

You know, the biggest piece I would say is letting a feeling of overwhelm or lack of organization keep you from following up at all in the first place. That's most of the time what I see happening is just a lack of follow-up because of disorganization, because of, you know, all the different things that can come up. And it tends not to be a thing that gets systematized well. The other end of the spectrum is you have people that are just completely— they're basically just saying, hey, are you ready to buy it yet? And they're just coming back to you over and over again, and they annoy you to death. And so you don't want to be that person either. But more often it's just not doing it at all.

Yeah, not doing it at all, or doing it improperly, not taking the customer journey into account, or knowing what's appropriate to say at the specific time. Absolutely. Yeah. So I want to ask you about how this came about. I know that there's a family history here of, of Contact Mapping, but I'd love for you to tell us the story of how this came to be.

Yeah, so my dad and I co-founded Contact Mapping together, and it's funny, I was reflecting on this earlier. I think my very first job in like 1996, I was like, you know, 12 years old, something like that, was I went and did data entry into ACT, which is like one of the first CRMs for my dad. And he has just been this consummate networker for my entire life. And so I learned a lot of this from him. And meanwhile, I went off into a completely different realm, a totally different world from my dad. I was in the corporate technology world, but I had taken on board these ideas and these principles of how to treat people and how to build relationships and applied them in my own sphere. And about 5 years ago, we had this sort of epiphany moment that we had both achieved great success in totally different kinds of careers as a result of the power of relationship and really kind of doing the same thing in different ways. And so that was what created this idea for us to take that and systematize it into a tool that we could share with the world. And so that's how contact mapping came to be.

And in terms of the collaboration between you and your father, are you more on the technology side? I know that infusing technology is a really important part of the systematization of this.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm definitely the techie guy. I'm the one who's running the majority of the business operations day to day. My dad still is out there building a network professionally. He's still kind of at the top of his game. He's 71, almost 72 years old now. And he— the number of people that he stays in touch with in a meaningful way to this day absolutely astounds me. He is a machine. And so he really represents everything that we do and creates a lot of opportunities for us as a result of the networking that he does. And I'm kind of the one that's behind the scenes doing more of the building of the company.

Would I be putting you on the spot if I asked you how many contacts you and your father have, maybe collectively or individually? Like, would it be in the I mean, it's gonna be probably in the thousands, I would suspect, but is there any way of knowing?

So it's actually really funny. I'm so glad that our interview is happening today because I just ran this exact analysis for the first time. So I have something like 4,600 contacts in my database personally, just for me. My dad has something like 18,000 or 19,000. And the other day I got curious about how many of those people have I mapped? How many people have I actually taken some time to record a note or to remember something important about them to start to follow up with them and maintain that sort of contact like we're talking about? And I found out that I have 2,200 out of those 4,600 people that have at least one memory captured about them, which we can do in this very lightweight, easy-to-do way. And I've got something like 600 people that are in various levels of what I call a rotation of remember. So there's 600 people that I'm actively in touch with in an intentional way. And my app is just reminding me, hey, today it's time to reach out to Cheryl or whomever it is. And so I have a really easy way to do that without it taking me a ton of time or a lot of mental energy.

I love that. And you mentioned the, the verb mapping, but you use the word and the verb mapping in a very different way as it pertains to what we're talking about, which is mapping the contacts. So when it comes to that, and you mentioned memories, explain to us how this process works and By the way, for our audience who are watching the video or listening to the audio, look for a link around this content for a link to find out more about contact mapping because it may be something you want to implement in your business. But tell us a little bit about what this is. What does it mean to map a contact?

Yeah. So mapping is really the simple process of capturing a handful of things or maybe a lot of things that you want to remember about a specific person or conversation.. And when I boil it down, as I think about mapping a contact, it's really 3 main areas. I wanna capture some important kind of specific details of like, hey, I met Cheryl as a result of being a part of a group that we're in together, a mastermind group. So I wanna remember that. I wanna remember maybe their spouse's name, their kids' names, obviously the name of their business. Like what are the sort of key things that I wanna make sure that I get ahold of? That's one. Second thing is I wanna understand their values. So like what makes them tick? What makes them excited?

Maybe it's something that has nothing to do with their business.

Maybe you suddenly get on the subject of sports or cooking or something and they light up. You wanna make sure that you remember that. And then the third thing is where do they have pain in their life, right? Where do they have pain in their business? Where do they maybe have pain in some part of their personal life that comes up in that conversation? And I wanna pay attention to those things because I always want to be on the lookout for how I might be able to be of service to somebody in helping them get more of what they want. Whether it ties to my business or not. I think just karmically it's a good thing, and I think that great things happen as a result of helping people to get more of what they want. In turn, they'll be interested in helping you get more of what you want as well.

When we talk about these contacts and the number of contacts that you have, for example, for example, I don't know what my number is off the top of my head, but I would suspect it's probably similar to you in terms of thousands of of people. You cannot remember those details without mapping them. There is no way you could remember that. And it's the details of those relationships that will matter when you go back to follow up. So you mentioned knowing the kids' names maybe, or knowing something specific about them is really an important part of this whole equation. You mentioned you have a cycle, you call it, I think, the self-reinforcing cycle. Can you explain to us what that means and how it pertains to mapping?

Yeah, absolutely. So if I'm gonna go to the trouble of having a system around keeping in touch with 600 people, like, I'm not doing that because I'm sitting around with nothing to do, right? There has to be a reason for why I would do that. And the reason behind that is that if I can be intentional about staying in touch with a lot of people and I can tie it into making sure that I'm making a meaningful connection with them during the time times that I reach out. What happens as a result of that is that suddenly people who maybe were not interested in what you had to offer when you first spoke to them, their circumstances change and they think of you first in that moment. Or secondly, when they suddenly encounter somebody in their life who needs something like what you have, you occupy sort of the brain space for them where they go, who do I know who does this? You want to be the person who they think of first when that occurs. And so the self-reinforcing cycle is that if I can put that intention into staying in touch with people and loving on them without agenda. What our customers routinely will say to us is that I had this interaction where I reached out to somebody because of a rotation, maybe once a quarter, and suddenly I reach out to them. I'm like, hey, I was thinking about you. You know, I saw this article or whatever it is, and I thought of you as a result. And they will say to me something like, oh my goodness, you know, I was just about to call you, or I'm so glad you reached out today. Or whatever it is, either I need something or I have someone for you. And none of those opportunities would have come your way if it weren't for your having reached out, because everyone else is busy just like you are. And so it takes you showing up in their life consistently for the magic of those referrals and those opportunities that you would never have even known about to start showing up in your life. And it continues to sort of build as you create consistency there.

There was a situation earlier in my day today where I was on a call and someone was looking for help to find someone who works with grants, like somebody who's involved in, in grants, you know. Yep. And I thought to myself, I know I've met someone like that in the last couple of years. I— not recently, it's not in my recent memory. And I thought, who is that person? And because I hadn't mapped it properly, I couldn't help that person in this moment today when they were looking for— I couldn't make that introduction because I couldn't remember the details of this person I'd met. Using this as a, as a scenario of a potential scenario that maybe others might find themselves in, does contact mapping play into that? Could I have done a better job had I known about contact mapping sooner than I did?

Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I like to say about contact mapping is it's almost like it allows you to Google your own memory. So the idea is, you know, maybe you're connected to that person who does grant writing on LinkedIn, maybe not. But if you go on LinkedIn and you search for grant writing, you're gonna find 200 people. And the likelihood that you're gonna be able to remember which was the person who you were actually looking for in the first place is really low. There's just so much noise on the internet. And so what contact mapping allows you to do is it's instantly searchable. So you can find anybody based on any little thing that you might remember about them, as long as you build this habit of beginning to map or log those conversations and those memories. And then you can surface that instantly. And so that happens all the time. And it is the best feeling in the world when you go, goodness, I would never have been able to remember that person were it not for this. And on the other hand, I've been in your boat, in your shoes so many times before contact mapping, and there is no worse feeling than going, I usually it's like, I literally just had this conversation like 4 days ago. Who was that person? And it just seems to have kind of disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Yeah. So in terms of the art of following up and building systems to stay in touch, we're talking about tools and technology that exist today. On your phone, on your, on your computer that allow you to map these contacts properly. And in terms of the art, though, of following up, do you like to follow a certain cadence, a certain timeline? Tell us more about that.

Yeah, great question. So we often work in what we call rotations of Remember. So if you think about connecting with somebody, it kind of takes two routes at the beginning, right? You meet someone and either it's like, oh, there's an immediate business need and we're like working down the path of I'm gonna sell you something or you're gonna work with us as a client or whatever that is. But more often when you meet somebody from a networking perspective, it's really more, hey, now I'm interested to know that you have this, like we should stay in touch, whatever that is. And so the rotation of remember is for that second scenario and it's to do the work of staying in touch with that person so that you actually can bring something to fruition with that relationship. And so my recommendation is typically when I meet someone new, We'll have a couple of interactions over the first 1 to 2 weeks, depending on kind of the, the essence of that conversation. And then I'll move them out to a monthly rotation for 1 or 2 months. And then once it kind of goes into more of that steady state, I recommend quarterly. Because if you think about it, the number of people who you stay in touch with, if you have everybody on a monthly, it's gonna get to be a lot pretty quickly. If you have people on a quarterly, that becomes pretty manageable in a hurry. And so, and I find that quarterly is often enough that you have something interesting to share with them, and not like, I feel awkward, like we— it feels like it wasn't very long ago we spoke, but frequently enough to keep yourself in their mental memory to where they're thinking of you as one of the people who comes to mind when they're asked for something.

Yes, I like that. I think that's a great way to space that out, but to be able to then customize what that cycle is for the stage of relationship building that you're at with that particular person. That's what I heard you say. And I think it's brilliant that you've done this. So what is it? What is something, Adrian, that could be related to this or unrelated to this? A tip, a tool, a tactic, technique that's helping you to market yourself and contact mapping, or maybe your personal brand? What's something that's really helping you in terms of marketing today?

You know, one of the things that I think we often forget to think about when we are consuming content ourselves, right? I listen to a lot of podcasts, I read a lot of articles, I'm on Twitter a lot, all these sort of things. And it's really easy to sort of shift into this, this consumption mode, right? Like, I'm reading this, it's for me, and, you know, I'm going to sort of put it in the mental bank. Maybe I'll bookmark it for another day or whatever that is. What I have found a lot of fun and success with from a follow-up perspective is to add to sort of my mental framework around consuming content. Who do I know that would enjoy reading this or hearing about this? And so as often as possible, when I come across something interesting, I'm looking for at least one person who I could share it with. And that gives me this opportunity to create one of those touches that adds value to the recipient, and it allows me to create reach and value beyond just sort of adding more information to my brain. From being in that mode of consuming more content. So personal development stuff, you know, interesting articles, whatever that is, I always look for who might I be able to share this with as well.

That's a great tip. I love that. Here's something that you can add to your contact mapping of me for you is that I'm a big Prince fan. So if you ever come across, you know, a deep cut online or something to do with Prince, you can definitely send it my way. I will love that.

So I figured it. So now we know why the purple motif is, is what it is.

You got it. You got it. This is great, Adrian. It's just awesome to have you here and tell us about contact mapping, where people can get to learn more about it. I know we're going to leave a special link below the video for people who are watching the video and in the description for people who are listening to the audio. But just tell us a little bit about what the contact mapping website, where people ought to go first.

Yeah, absolutely. So contact mapping, just at a very high level, it's a system that allows you to be able to maintain and build an extremely powerful network that creates this sort of self-reinforcing mechanism. So it's an app on your phone. We're on iOS and Android, as well as a solution for your desktop computer. So everything's all in one place, and it integrates with all the major social platforms through a Chrome extension that allows you to pull in content from there. So, uh, definitely check out the link that Cheryl will share down below to get access to it, uh, and you can get started that way. We have a, a free tier so you can play around with this before you need to, to spend any money on it, and I think you'll really like it.

Awesome. Adrian, this has been so much fun. I'm so glad that we had this opportunity to chat about contact mapping and, and really the art of follow-up, which is ultimately what we ought to all be doing more of as coaches, consultants, and people looking to scale our businesses. So thank you for being here on Cash In On Camera.