A message from Sandy. Is follow-up a mystery to you? Have you ever said, “Yeah, I’ll do that” and completely failed to? I will also bet you felt pretty bad about it. Saying you will do something and not doing it will cause some cuts and bruises to your reputation. There are all kinds of follow up we may be responsible for:

1. Follow-up with personal commitments you have made to family and friends, social follow-up if you will, requiring your presence in body, or in thought, (e-mail, a hand written note) keeping in touch, letting those you care about know how much you care.

Fallout: Forget a birthday, an anniversary, miss a social function—get too sloppy in this department–and you will end up in the dog house! Getting out—-not so easy.

2. A follow-up commitment and responsibility to your team and your team to the practice. This may include follow-up on growth conferences, training, lab cases, team meetings, equipment repairs, patient’s well being, addressing patients questions and concerns, marketing opportunities, patients delaying treatment, or any patient that on has gotten off track– commonly known as the dreaded reactivation call, the list goes on and on. All of this type of follow-up is crucial to keep your practice vibrant, growing, and the always important– full appointment book.

Fallout: We’ve all experienced it–from seriously unhappy staff and doctor issues–which leads to drama,drama, and more drama, to panic, anxiety attacks, and breathing into a paper bag over appointment book openings.

There are all kinds of reasons why we sometimes fail to do what we say we’ll do:

——–We over-committed ourselves,  we have run out of energy and time.

——–We found that we really didn’t want to do it  (this can be a major problem when work related, and the team is counting on you. This is the time to get creative–we all have responsibilities that we do not love doing. I say let the negotiating begin! Find a way to make it fun, trade tasks with someone else, delegate it, find a way to make it disappear. For example: If you hate making collection calls, as Janis says,”Make sure your financial arrangements are iron clad.” then you are less likely to have to make the call.

——We simply forgot about it, until it was too late.

How can you make sure that you always follow through on what you’ve said you’ll do?

• Stop and think before taking on a new commitment. Don’t say “yes” too quickly. For some people you may find it hard to turn someone down. In the long run, it’s better to tell people that you don’t have the time or energy to help them rather than promising to do it, only to leave them in the lurch. Ask for some breathing space, when asked to take on something new, carefully evaluate what you already have going on. Can something you’re currently working on be delayed to make room for a new task? Reviewing everything you are already doing with your boss, may have him thinking twice about adding more to your plate, and delegating the task to another staff member. Take a day or two to think about it–make sure you can be wholeheartedly committed.
• Delegate and ask for help where possible. Don’t get to hung up on the idea of doing it all yourself (that would be another gremlin Nancy-needs-no-help) In many cases you do not have to do it all alone–you have only promised to make sure it gets done. Many of us aren’t very good at delegating (Nancy-needs-no-help tells me no need to) the truth is that it empowers both us and the people we delegate to.
• Keep good notes and records. A big reason for failing to follow through is forgetfulness. Forgetting the task altogether, or my favorite, forgetting why you are following up because you either don’t have any notes or they are so vague you still have no clue. Again, now is the time to be creative—-you’ll have to find your way blindly—-no fear—just do it! It’s easy to say “Yep, I’ll take care of that” during a meeting or phone call–only to let the task slip completely out of your mind. Screwing up some of these things may just be embarrassing, but not following up on bigger more important things could potentially be damaging to the practice and yourself. After all, if you can’t be trusted to handle the small tasks, people aren’t going to want you taking care of bigger ones.
• If all else fails——–back out with grace. Sometimes you may not be able to keep your commitments, you may come to a point where you realize something has to go. It may be a small commitment to follow-up–like returning a patients phone call–if you still don’t have the information for them, at least call and let them know you haven’t forgotten them. They will understand, and they always appreciate the update, even if it’s not yet complete. The key here is recognizing it early on, give people as much warning as possible, don’t leave people hanging at the last minute.

How do you make sure you follow through with everything you have committed to?