Hey now, welcome to the Inside BS show. Today's show is all about follow-up after a business development meeting. If you were with us yesterday, we talked about how to qualify business.

So if you missed that, I'm gonna put a link down below to yesterday's show so you know how to qualify a prospect when you're going into a meeting. Now, the meeting's over, it's done, and you need to follow up. Here are your five steps to follow up.

Step number one, record the meeting. Get permission from the other person, and it doesn't matter if the meeting's in person or if the meeting is on the phone. Ask for permission first, and here's what you say.

Mr. Prospect, Mrs. Prospect, with your permission, I'd like to record this meeting, and what I will do is I will send you the notes from the meeting afterwards. You see, I take the recording and I put it into some software and it summarizes the meeting and it gives me notes with action items so I know exactly what I'm supposed to do on your behalf after the meeting's over. Is it okay if I hit record on my phone right now and I record the session? They will, 90% of the time, they will say yes.

If they say no, they say no, but 90% of the time they say yes, you record the meeting, and here's the reason why. After the meeting is over, you take that audio recording and you put it into AI-assisted transcript software. There's dozens of different forms of AI software to use.

It will, with amazing accuracy, transcribe the entire meeting for you. Then you put in a prompt into whatever your favorite AI tool is, and you say, please summarize this meeting for me, but give me detailed action items for me and for the other participant in the meeting. The AI software will do a great job of summarizing the meeting and giving you the action steps.

I always recommend that you listen to the recording of the meeting and go through those action steps afterwards as well. This is for your benefit to absorb the information, and honestly, if you approach every sales meeting like a researcher looking for problems to solve, you're gonna get a ton from recording the meeting and summarizing the transcript afterwards. So that's step one.

Step two is to ask AI to carve that transcript and that summary into an email to send off to the client, telling the client what you're gonna do and what they should do. Now, the client is a prospect, but you're hoping they'll become a client so the next steps are clearly spelled out, and that's step two. Send the email that AI helps you write with all the action items for you, all the action items for the prospect in it.

That's step two. Get this done within 24 hours of the meeting. Why is speed so important? Speed is important because time kills all deals.

If you're not aggressively following up with the prospect, they're gonna go away or they may find somebody else to solve their problem. Step number three is for you to write a handwritten note. You're gonna write a handwritten note to that client, thanking them for spending the time with you and for sharing their issues with you, and you're going to say you look forward to speaking with them again.

Very few people do this. Don't be lazy. Make this happen.

Write a handwritten note to the person you met with afterwards. I don't care if you are meeting with a center of influence instead of with a client. You always do these steps afterwards.

The transcript of the meeting, the email follow-up with action items, and the handwritten note afterwards. Step number four, connect them with someone who can do business with them. So listen, you've got your action items.

You know what you're gonna do. You're probably gonna do some follow-up. You may send a proposal.

All that's great. They're gonna get your handwritten note three or four days after the meeting. You're gonna send it right after the meeting.

They'll get the handwritten note three or four days later, but you also want to try to connect them with somebody who can do business with them. Why are you doing this? You're doing this to demonstrate to them that you care. You want to show them that you want to make sure that their business is successful, that their business is thriving.

You want to do everything you can to help them be successful. You want to show them that you care. It's important that you connect them with someone who can do business with them.

Step number five is the follow-up after you've connected them with someone who does business with them. I say to my clients all the time, how you do one thing is how you do everything. After you've connected them with someone who does business with them, you follow up with both parties.

And you follow up with the person that you connected to them to make sure that they followed up with your client. You follow up with your prospective client to say, did Mr. Smith check in with you? Did he follow up with you? Everybody says yes, everybody's happy. It shows that you're thorough.

That's the bottom line on this entire process. Your follow-up system demonstrates an attention to detail, a level of preparation, and a level of thoroughness that most people don't show. If someone is on the fence about doing business with you, if they're comparing you to someone else and you've done these five steps, it sets you apart from everyone else who does what you do.

This is so important, I need to stress it. Let me give you a couple of examples. Example number one.

I'm working with a professional services firm, let's call them an architecture firm. And they are looking for business from developers. And they are aggressive in their pursuit of seeking business for developers.

I have a program where I interview developers every month and I introduce the developers to my group of people who invest in their projects. The head of the architecture firm is someone who is quite successful. So I connect the head of the architecture firm with the head of a company who is developing projects that the architecture firm will love.

And I do exactly what we talked about. I connect the two of them in an in-person meeting, I record the meeting on my phone with their permission, I then transcribe and send the follow-up email to everyone. Person A is going to do this, person B is going to do this, and I'm going to do this.

I send it out to everyone. After the meeting is over, I make introductions to both parties to people who can do business with them and I follow up with both parties. It turns out that the architect likes one of the projects the developer is doing so much, he invests in the developer's project.

The developer in turn comes to me and says, I'm wondering what we can do together because if you know fantastic people like this, I would love to learn more about how you can help us. The developer turns, or the architect turns to me and says, if you know great developers like this, I'm sure you can help me meet other developers. I don't care whether anything ever happens with this guy or not, I'm investing in his project because I really believe in it.

They in turn decide they want to do business together. I win, each one of them wins, we all win. That's because of the follow-up system that I put in place.

Everyone thinks I am thorough. When I get a referral from the networking community that I am part of, I go through that same exact process. Seven times out of 10, that process results in nothing.

But the three times it results in something, it is well worth the effort for doing it all 10 times. This is a competitive advantage for you. I hope that you use this process in your business right now to close more deals, but more importantly, you use this process to demonstrate to everyone who comes in contact with you that you are detail-oriented and you are thorough.

My name is Dave Lorenzo, I am the godfather of growth. I do a LinkedIn live session every day and we're doing it in the 11 o'clock hour on East Coast time. I also do a podcast, you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

It's called the Inside BS Show. The podcast drops every morning at 6 a.m. I'm on YouTube with videos, just type in my name, you can find me there. Thanks for joining me today.

Here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.