Christina - Follow through is vital in our business. It's the people in our business that over-promise and under-deliver that never amount to anything. In fact when you under-promise and over-deliver people take notice.

practice make consistent.

My guess is........FOLLOW THROUGH! Now I'll read the post to see if I was right.

Yep, I was. :)

Christina,

I would like to "ditto" Bill's comment -- underpromise and overdeliver -- and then keep delivering with excellent follow up, that is the key, folks want to know that you care and they know this by your follow up skills to stay in touch, to do what you say you are going to do and then do it!  Good points -- I am just not great at doing it either and try really hard to do so, but there are days I just drop out b/c I am exhausted!  I will work on this though and this is a great reminder. 

Sondra

great post-I, like yourself and many other readers, need a reminder to follow through. It's not that I don't want to, I think sometimes it's way too easy to get distracted by everything I have to do during the day, and sometimes don't end up be as productive because I don't focus on the task at hand. I need to stop making excuses and start planning out my days better!

Christina just think where you would be when you get the whole follow through thing figured out!  I have the same challenge as you in that I often find that I am great at moving forward and getting new opportunities but it is the past clients that I have not contacted in a while (longer than I like to admit with some).  It is also very hard not to under-promise and over-deliver when we are in such a service oriented business.  You will have to let me in on how you figure it all out...I will let you know what I discover as well!

Bill - yes it is and yes you are right.

Marcus - exactly!

Joe - you goof! 

Sondra - Yes, I saw it as a reminder as well.

Danielle - exactly.  We get distracted by the 80% and don't work on the 20% aka follow-through.

Jon - For me it's the old Nike slogan 'just do it'. 

Christina, Being a listing broker almost all of my past customers are moving out of State. So keeping in tpouch with them doesn't do me any good. And that's a good thing since I too am terrible when it comes to follow up. I'm excellent with follow through though. I always do what I say.

Bryant - for the most part, I'm in the same situation - except, we live in an area where all to often, friends and family of the client will still be here or, the client will be able to refer other clients to us, no matter where they move to in the country.  So, I'm really working on connecting with all clients, even if they've moved out of the area.

Christina,

That is an intriguing statement, but it's probably true. It's wonderful to have talent, yet it's going to be wasted if you don't follow through. The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. How about having half a measure of talent and another half of follow-through? That might work even better. Good reminder post.

Great post Christina!  This is a great reminder to stay in touch with past clients and customers.  I know first-hand the importance of that as I've gotten a lot of great business by doing that very thing.  I use postcards, emails, enewsletters, followup letter campaigns, phone calls, etc - a combination of those keeps business coming my way, and you have to love the referrals that come about because of this, too.  Oh, I almost forgot to include hand-written notecards - those a powerful!

Ann

with no disrespect intended sometimes extremely talented people think that's enough and they can live on their talent alone and sometimes they can. But they often get out hustled by those who follow through on a more regular basis.

Esko - I agree.

Ann - yes - ditto what you said

Jay - no disrespect taken, it's exactly what I'm saying.  You can dream up anything you want, but unless you take action, it will never come to pass.