My team at work led four industry marketing events during last week’s New York Social Media Week.
Much planning went into each event performance.
The team executed well. Plenty of well-deserved gratitude was exchanged among colleagues.
Importantly, though, the show is not over.
In fact, the work has just begun.
Now comes the hard part of turning new connections into real business. In fact, there often is more work involved in the latter. Each connection must be shepherded individually to the end. And the time crunch is massive, because opportunities are perishable. Effective follow-up only happens if all the steps and actions are defined during the earliest planning stages.
This may seem trivial, but it’s not. Because the order, excitement and explicit nature of the performance inherently prompts humans to pay more attention to it versus the subtle, less-glamorous follow-up.
That’s why it’s critical to recognize, plan, monitor, reward and celebrate both.