By Scott Nichols

It’s all in the follow-through! If you were to Google the definition of follow-through, it will come up saying “the continuing of an action or task to its conclusion.” In management, I have found the number one reason someone or something will fail is due to the lack of the last step, which is the follow-through. Many of us have great ideas, and we know how to bring those ideas to life and start the process of enhancing our business, but we fail anyway. It’s not because the employee didn’t have your same vision or that the process went wrong – it just wasn’t completed; the follow-through process was skipped.

Accountability

Having a proper follow-through process when working with your staff will improve accountability. Here is an example of how a special can work without having proper accountability. Let’s say your average EFT right now is at $25 and you are looking to improve that average EFT to $35 with the members you currently have. You spend the time and resources and come up with a program that will give current members the option to upgrade or add an additional membership to their account. Your advertising and marketing is spot on and you anticipate a great response. You spend the time training your staff on how to sell the upgrades and additional memberships, with a goal of goal of selling 100 additional upgrades and memberships by the week’s end. As the week goes on, you see that you aren’t selling nearly the amount you thought. At the end of the week, you sold only 25 new memberships. You figure the special didn’t work, not knowing that you missed the last step: the follow-through.

This special was there, and marketing, advertising, and training were completed, but the follow through was not. As an owner or manager, you know that you need to reach 25 or more memberships a day. So, what went wrong? Nobody on your team pushed the promotion as they should have because they knew they didn’t have to. When you have follow though, you are going to talk with your employees each day or week and go through their performance. This daily or weekly meeting is crucial for running successful programs.

If you want your employees to succeed, you need to set up requirements. Still using the example above, if you told each employee the day they work that they need to sell five upgrades or an additional membership, then you have something to hold them accountable for. During your daily or weekly meeting, you can then reward or reprimand that employee, illustrating why these meetings are so important. The follow-through meeting is easy to do but also easy to skip.

Examples of How to Run the Follow-Through

Here are some great examples of how to run a successful follow-through program:

• Make a Form: The employee must know what the requirements are that you expect. You can do this by creating a form where you can set requirements daily and the employee then fills out their results.
• Grade Sheet: Create a weekly grade sheet that goes over categories you are measuring. You need to take the time each week to go through each of your employees’ sales statistics and fill out these forms.
• Pave the Path: Always include a path of improvement. Make sure you always show the employee how they can improve.
• Meetings: Meet with each employee weekly to discuss the daily requirements and weekly grade sheets.

The follow-through is something that is easy to do, but can be forgotten or put off. As you can see from the example above, the follow-through is not just for the staff’s performance, but also for any program or promotions you are looking to run. Establishing a strong follow through program will help set you up for the results you are looking for.