THE STARTUP CHAT

Steli Efti:

Hey everyone. This is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah. And today, on The Startup Chat, we’re gonna talk about  the art of the follow-up. And this is one of those episodes where I know  Steli’s better than me at this. And the reason for that is that I’m very  good at responding when someone comes at me and e-mails me. But, I know this  about myself, I’m not as good as I’d like to be about following up with  people. So I’m eager to learn. I’m a sponge here. I’m gonna probably ask you some crazy questions, but bring it on. What’s the deal? How do you follow up?  Obviously, I know why you should follow-up. I get it. I’m just going to start  with the sales angle, which is if you don’t follow up, you’re not actually doing  your job. This is probably why I’ve never done sales formally, except as a founder,  which is kind of different in my opinion, probably for another day. But bring it  on, dude. What’s up? What do I need to know about follow-ups? What does everyone  need to know? I know you are very good at this.

Steli Efti:

First, I have this vision that I want to go with you to some startup  and do some sales calls with you. At some point, we need to do that.  That’d probably be a lot of fun. When it comes to the follow-up itself, the  advice I give about the follow-up is the highest advice I give. I know that  just purely measured-

Hiten Shah:

Wow.

Steli Efti:

Yeah, by far. Funny enough, it’s not the type of advice I’m most interested in  giving right now. I was very passionate many years ago, but I’ve been giving the  same technical advice, adding some more and more case studies and testimonials and stories to  this, but the core basic advice is always the same. And obviously after years of  giving this, it’s not the most interesting topic for me to share with people, but  I constantly still do it almost daily. The reason for that is just the sheer  amount of feedback that I’m receiving from people, with real numbers attached to that feedback,  on how much value they received by following my follow-up advice. It’s just not even  funny. We’re talking, I dunno if tens or hundreds of millions. But the amount of  deals closed, the amount of money raised, the amount of press received, the amount of  people hired, the amount of things people accomplished and told me about afterwards, just purely  by doing what I told them to do on follow-up is just insane. So I  feel this responsibility to keep sharing that advice, because I know that people get a  lot out of it. I’ll summarize it, and I’m sure we’re gonna dig deep, and  this is gonna be interesting to talk about with you specifically. But the basic philosophy  that I have, is that I think that most things in life, you have to  first show up, and then you have to follow up and follow through. And I  feel like showing up is tough, but it’s still fairly crowded. But the follow-up and  follow-through, dude, there’s just nobody competing with you, because nobody does it. And the reason  that most people are not following up and following through, is that they take silence  as rejection. The story in most people’s minds is, if I had a conversation with  Hiten, if I send him an e-mail, and he replied and said, “Yeah, that sounds  interesting, let’s talk.” And then I suggest some times to talk, and I don’t hear  back from Hiten, and I follow up maybe once or twice, and I still don’t  hear back. Most people will interpret that silence as rejection. And they feel bad about  it. And because it hurts to be rejected, and people don’t wanna continuously keep experiencing  that emotional rejection, and because people don’t wanna be annoying, or be received as socially  awkward, or a stalker, or whatever, they just stop there. They’re like, “Well Hiten says  he wants to talk to me, but I e-mailed him twice, and he didn’t reply  to me, so I’m gonna stop pursuing that idea, that interactional relationship.” And, to me,  that is a fundamentally flawed way of thinking. My hypothesis when somebody goes silent, is  that they just got busy. They have a life. And something popped up. Maybe they’re  sick, maybe something’s going on in their personal life. Maybe something changed in their business  priorities. Maybe they’re just having a tough time. Maybe I’m just not as important to  them. I’m just not the center of their universe. And depending on how important this  topic is to me, how important this relationship, this meeting, whatever I try to accomplish,  is, I’m gonna take full responsibility for making sure that happens. And I’m gonna try  to be a resource to you, to make that happen. So I’m gonna keep following  up with you, indefinitely, forever sometimes, until I get a result. “Yes” is good. “No”  is good. No response, or what I call the “Maybe” land, that’s where companies, ideas,  and value is going to die. That’s where startups go to die. And that’s something  I don’t … I don’t accept that. So, my follow-up philosophy is very simple: Take  full ownership of the relationship. When somebody doesn’t reply, just assume they’re busy. Keep giving  them a chance to respond. And you don’t have to get too fancy. There’s a  million different tactics and things you can do to make the follow-up more interesting, more  curious, cooler, funnier, more tactical, more valuable. There’s a lot of that stuff, and if  you want we can get into it. But at the most basic level, just keep  following up with people, with the caveat that you had some kind of an interaction  before, until you get a response, and magic will happen. I promise you. I’m putting  together a book later this year, that’s gonna be all … There’s gonna be a  ton of customer stories and testimonials of people that have closed the million-dollar deal, raced  the round, got an article in the press, just by keep following up persistently and  consistently, and not taking themselves too serious, or not getting all emotional and emo about it. And then boom, after the 8th follow-up, the 10th, the 12th, the 20th, the  person responded and said, “You know what, thank you so much for following up. Sorry  for the late response, I got busy, this happened, that happened. But we wanna move  forward, let’s go.” So, that’s in a nutshell, A: why I keep talking about it,  and B: why I think that it’s valuable, why most people don’t do it. And  if you do it, “you” being the audience that’s listening to us, your listeners. If  you just start following up twice as much as you used to, if that’s the  only thing we accomplish in this conversation, we’ve made the world a better place, and  every single person that’s gonna follow that advice, I guarantee you is gonna see more  success and more results.

Hiten Shah:

All right. I love, love, love it. So: How do I do this? I’m scared.

Steli Efti:

I respect that. And I appreciate you sharing it, even if you’re role-playing for somebody.  Well, first-

Hiten Shah:

I mean, it’s true. Why do people not do it? They’re scared.

Steli Efti:

They’re scared, yeah.

Hiten Shah:

I am. I’m not kidding. I don’t follow up with people on sales because I’m  scared. I’m scared of what I’m gonna hear. I’m scared of bothering them. You said  it, a lot, right? So to me, the root cause of this is, I’m scared.  So how do I get over that? I know it’s an emotion, and it’s true,  but I find founders all the time. They’re scared of a lot of things, but  this thing? This is scary, dude. I e-mailed them, they didn’t respond. It’s kind of  like dating in a way. Right? You’re always thinking of, “Do you respond? Do you  wait? What do you do?” And this is worse, because, “They didn’t respond! Shit, they  didn’t respond!” What do you do?

Steli Efti:

Do I call?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, I’m scared! I’m scared! What’s up, Steli? Help me out!

Steli Efti:

All right. First, I think that I would tell you that you need to realize  that that fear is normal and everybody has it. Conquering that fear is what will  help you succeed and accomplish things that other people don’t because they don’t wanna conquer  that fear. I wouldn’t even say … Don’t feel bad about being afraid. That’s totally  normal. Everybody does it. I don’t feel particularly awesome when somebody doesn’t reply to my  e-mails, or doesn’t reply to my communication. That’s not something I love. But I’ve learned  to get over myself, and get over that fear. And I know that there is  real value and power and growth associated to overcoming that. So that’s what I would  focus on. See that fear as what it is, which is an opportunity for you  to stand out and accomplish the things that your competitors and other startups that compete  with you will not, because they are as afraid as you, and they’re not gonna  take any action. In terms of the tactical “How do I do it?” here’s what  I would recommend to people. There’s just a few simple rules when it comes to  the follow-up. Rule number one is that you wanna keep it as clean, as simple,  as short and to the point as possible. Don’t refer to all the follow-up that  has happened before. Like, “Hey, Hiten, this is the fifth time I e-mailed you, I’ve  copied all the previous e-mails below, it happened over a time span of four weeks,  I’m wondering what has happened.” This is all wasting time. Hiten knows he’s gotten a  bunch of e-mails from you he didn’t respond to. Just ignore that. There’s no reason  to talk about the prior e-mails you’ve sent. Don’t be needy. Don’t get all emotional  on me. “Well, Hiten, I know that people say you’re the most generous founder in  the Valley, but I don’t find it that generous when you never reply, maybe you  are a little arrogant. I dunno what’s going on, maybe you can give me the  courtesy of just a quick reply right now.” Whoa! Don’t do that. All joking aside,  Hiten, I had … At least five or six times, somebody sent me a message  on Facebook. And I hate messaging on Facebook, I’m not really great at keeping up  with them. Sent me a message on Facebook, “Oh my God, I’m so inspired Steli,  I love your blah-blah-blah,” all this good stuff. And then two hours later, send another  message saying, “Hey dude, what’s up? Blah-blah-blah, hahaha, smiley, why are you not responding?” And  then an hour later, sending me a hate message. “I knew it! You’re an arrogant  asshole! You said we could always get in touch with you and ask for help,  and here I am, asking for help, and no response from you!” Whoa, motherfucker! It’s  been seven hours, give me a break! This is Facebook messages! Just relax! The fundamental  truth is that we’ve all had this. We’ve all had somebody that has been e-mailing  us, and we know we should’ve responded, but we quite haven’t yet. And we feel  a little guilty about this. Don’t make me feel even more guilty. If you make  me feel worse, I’m never gonna respond to you. If you make me feel weirded  out or scared about you, I’m never gonna respond to you. So keep it clean,  simple, and nice! This is a famous story I share over and over again, but  I once follow up with a billionaire investor in San Francisco 48 times before I  got the meeting. I got an intro to him. He said “Yes, I wanna meet.”  I e-mailed him some times to meet. I didn’t hear anything. I e-mailed again, and  didn’t hear anything. 48 e-mails later, I got a response, “Steli, thank you so much, we had a crisis overseas. Thanks for the follow-up and follow-through. Can you meet tomorrow  1 p.m. At my office?” And all my 48 follow-up e-mails, all of them, total  lack of creativity. All of them sounded something like this: “Hey dude! Another beautiful day  in paradise! Can we meet this Tuesday or Thursday, 1 p.m. Or 3 p.m.?” The  next message would be, “Hey dude! Some good news! We just hired this amazing person,  look at this press release! Can you do any time in the morning this week?  I’m totally flexible.” The next e-mail was like, “Hey, how about this Friday? Do you  have time to meet?” 48 times! My follow-ups were all one sentence, very upbeat, very positive, smiley-smiley, and very to the point! “This day or this day?” “That time or  that time?” “Let’s meet!” If there was some good news about our company or our  product, I would quickly add it. “Hey, just launched a big new feature! When can  we meet this Friday?” And that was it! I just kept it so light, so  simple. And when the time was right for him to respond, he responded. So, when  you follow up, keep it simple, keep it light, keep it to the point. In  terms of frequence, you might wanna start more frequent at the beginning of the relationship,  and get less frequent over time. So if the relationship is hot, you wanna maybe  follow up a day later, then two days later, then three days later. Then a  week later. Then two weeks later, then three, and then once a month. Generally my advice would be to be very frequent at the beginning of the relationship, when it’s  very hot, very top of mind, and over time to get less frequent, to not  over-burn that channel. And then when it comes to channels, and I’ll the technical stuff  up there. When it comes to channels, there is a pyramid of what kind of  tool or channel you can use to follow up, and both of them have benefits,  pros and cons. E-mail is the greatest channel to follow up, in the sense that  you can do it 48 times or even more. It’s very undisturbing. It’s in the  inbox. People can look at it or ignore it, archive, or do whatever they want  with it. You can do a lot of follow-up in the e-mail, and it’s very convenient for the receiver to ignore and do whatever they want with it, whenever they  want with it. So e-mail is the channel I would use if it’s not urgent.  If it’s absolutely urgent, you have a deadline, it needs to happen at a given  time or right now, you move up the urgency ladder in your follow-up. But with  moving up in the urgency ladder, you move down in the amount of frequency you  can add to it. You can e-mail them 48 times. One level above in urgency  might be to SMS them or text them. But you shouldn’t do that 48 times,  you can do that a lot less. One level above that is to call them.  And again, you can’t call them 48 times. You might get into trouble. You might  just be able to call them two or three times, and that’s pretty much as  much as you can do there. But it’s much more disruptive, it’s much more in  their face, it’s much more real-time. And the highest level is in person. And that  you obviously should never do 48 times, you might get into jail. But you know  how many deals have been won by somebody saying “Hey, I was just in the  area, and I thought I would just drop by your office and see if you  have 10 minute time to grab a coffee”? I can tell you stories over stories  of salespeople closing massive deals or saving massive deals by “just being in the area”  and dropping by in person to make sure that something happens. So, that’s kind of  the “how to do it.” If you’re like, “I’m lost. I wanna do more follow-up,  but I’m not quite sure what are the conventions, what are the rules?” this is  the simple framework that I would offer you. I feel like I killed you with  information, Hiten. You’re like “I don’t know what to ask.” Are you still there?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, yeah, yeah! No, that was a lot of info. I’m just thinking through what  you were saying. Dude, I have no depth here, in terms of how to get  myself to follow up. What I do know, and I think we should end it  probably with something like this, you might have something else to share. This is so  important, and I suck at it. And you’ve given a ton of tips about how  to get better at it. So I’m actually really looking forward to what you’re writing  later this year, just because for me, I see a lot of … It’s easier  for me to tell someone how to get over it, than get over it myself.  But at the same time, it seems like one of those things where you just  have to force yourself to do it and practice. It’s much easier for me to  just reach out to someone and ask for help, than to actually go do the  next step, which is if they don’t respond, follow up with them. That’s the part  that I always get hung up at. And I think the way you’re thinking about  it and the way you do it is pretty awesome, so thanks for the tips  so far.

Steli Efti:

Thank you so much. And let’s wrap the episode up with a question I have  for you. Because I think this is gonna be very valuable to people that are  still internally conflicted about doing the follow-up or not. I’m this big advocate for the  follow-up, so I’m not a good person to serve you on this. But you are  very high in demand, you have a big brand and rightfully so. A lot of  people know you, a lot of people admire you, a lot of people want your  attention, your time, your feedback, something from you. So you get a ton of people  reaching out to you. I’m just curious, if you honestly wanna share this with the  audience: Whenever you work with someone, it doesn’t matter if it’s a founder or a  service provider, anybody that you’ve interacted with where maybe you have dropped the ball, or you’re not as responsive, or whatever happened. How do you perceive the follow-up when it’s  done with you? When somebody is persistent and consistent in checking in with you when  you’ve gone silent on them. How do you perceive that? Is that something that you  find annoying? Do you think, “Well, my God, this person must be very unsuccessful because  they’re getting in touch with me so much”? What is your response when somebody else  is good at the follow-up with you?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah. What’s the best way to put it? I’m always intrigued by interesting people and  interesting e-mails. And I feel like not enough people spend enough time writing good e-mail  when they respond. So one thing is like, “Okay, you should respond.” That’s really great  feedback, obviously. But I think the bigger piece for me is, how do you get  someone to actually respond to that follow-up? And for me, I get a ton of  these, I respond to very few of them. But the ones I respond to, honestly  it’s very simple. They took the time to think of me. They actually took the  time to think of me, and didn’t write me an e-mail that feels generic. Even  if it’s not generic, it shouldn’t feel generic. I mean, I’m sorry, even if it  is generic and they’re sending it to everyone, it should definitely be a little more  custom than what I would normally get. Because so many people send such bad e-mail.  E-mails that I don’t have any, any reason to respond to.

Steli Efti:

I love it. All right, we’ll wrap up with that. For anybody that’s listening, if  you wanna hear some more tips and advice on the follow-up, and how to even  use humor, and GIFs that convert really well, and all that good tactical stuff, just  shoot me an e-mail, steli@close.io. Just put in the subject line, “Follow-up,” and then I  will ignore you, and then two, three days later you’ll have to ping me again  about it. And then I might give you early access to the book, but also  just share some articles or some advice with anybody that feels like they need more  advice on the topic of follow-up. It’s always my honor and pleasure. And this is  it from us for this episode!

Hiten Shah:

That’s that! See you!