Article Highlights:
- Weak follow-up is one of the places the Founder Tax shows up because the founder gets pulled back in to rescue the deal when the team struggles.
- More seller activity doesn’t fix stalled deals in services because buyer movement depends on trust, expertise, and follow-up that helps the buyer see the deeper problem.
- Generic follow-up creates homework for the buyer, and most buyers delay when your message adds work, risk, and no clear next step.
- Strong follow-up depends on a system: good notes, usable proof, clear next-step rules, and standards that help sellers move deals without founder rescue.
Service firms know projects get won or lost in the follow-up.
Buyers are busy. They have loads of priorities—fires to put out—lots going on in the business. Even when they want your service, they probably won’t get to you as fast as they want.
Teams put a lot of weight on follow-up.
They just do it badly.
When follow-up is weak, the founder wonders what’s happening with the deal. They look at the pipeline and see emails that don’t match what they would have sent. Now the founder’s back in the CRM, trying to move the deal.
The founder knows how to answer objections, frame the value, and give the buyer a story they can use internally. So they step in to “help”.
More follow-up doesn’t mean more progress
“Selling is a numbers game.”
I once closed a deal with a $300M consulting firm from a single connection request sent on LinkedIn. Didn’t even have a “personalized” message. They checked out my profile and our website, then jumped on a call.
Sales is fucking bizarre.
It can feel like luck/random/chance… sometimes it is. But you can’t build a repeatable sales system around that. And you can’t hope your team will luck into a deal.
Founders are often amazing sellers. They believe their team can’t sell as they do, so they optimize for volume (gotta knock on doors… get your reps in).
It’s easy for them to inspect:
- Emails sent
- Calls made
- Touches on accounts
You see movement, and you think: Progress.
That’s a lie. Busy isn’t effective. And more activity is often more noise.
But it’s easier to evaluate activity at a glance.
It’s harder to evaluate quality:
- Does the message line up with the conversation?
- Does it reflect your expertise?
- Does it give the buyer a reason to reply?
Selling services isn’t a numbers game. Not for effective sellers. You need to communicate trust, impact, and expertise.
Timing’s important, but you can’t control that. You can control what your prospect sees at the right time and when your team engages with them.
In short, sales success is about delivering value.
The best sellers understand the buyer’s problem, connect it to the work, and surface the underlying need rather than waiting for the buyer to do the work for them.
They carry the conversation forward with VALUE.
Done right, the buyer starts to trust the seller. They feel okay with letting go of the reins a little and trusting the expert. When you don’t do that, when you force your buyer to do the homework, they stay in control, and you stay stuck as a vendor.
More activity does not fix weak follow-up.
A seller can send 15 emails and get ignored if they’re not delivering value. You send one value-packed email that delivers value and get a response.
That’s the difference between sales activity and sales value.
Generic follow-up furns into buyer homework
No one wants to do someone else’s job.
They have enough on their plate without helping a seller hit their quota for free. And yet, so many sellers give buyers homework.
Generic follow-up is homework.
Every time your sales team says “Bumping this”, “Just checking in”, “Have you thought any more about our service”, “Has anything changed with budget, “Let’s hop on a call to discuss our service”, they’re giving your buyer work (you put the monkey on their back).
Your buyer has to sit down and figure out how your firm fits into their plan. They have to remember what you do. Weight your service against other priorities. Think about how to present your proposal to their team.
Doesn’t matter that they need your service. They need a lot of services. And your buyer is a human. The decision committee…also humans (until Sam Altman’s army of AI toasters takes all our jobs). They are going to choose the path of least resistance and/or the most painfully obvious problem 100% of the time, which means your “nice to have” service waits in line.
Sellers act like buyers are waiting for their emails. Just hitting refresh on their inbox, hoping that you’ll just “check in” or “bump” something.
No. No. No. No. No.
They have KPIs, internal politics, competing priorities, job concerns, and a pile of other things to deal with that day. You are one task out of dozens. The more your follow-up feels like something that has to be decoded, the more likely it is to be ignored.
“But we had a discovery call. They know what we do!”
If you go back and watch that call recording, look at their eyes. Are they paying attention or checking emails? If they are paying attention, how likely is it that they had back-to-back calls that day, and as great as your presentation was, they forgot it?
You can’t assume your message stuck.
Buyers are humans. And humans are mostly unreliable. Not intentionally, we just all have a lot of shit going on.
Founders know this.
They know what it’s like to run a company, so when they engage with prospects, they know how to subconsciously navigate objections while moving the deal to the next step. They also have the weight of “being the founder” stacked behind them. People are more likely to listen and act.
Your sellers don’t have that.
That is why every touchpoint they have with the buyer must give them a reason to respond. It has to make the next step obvious, take a different angle on the problem, surface something they missed, or bring in the proof that helps them move forward.
A gentle reminder won’t do it.
| Weak follow-up | What the buyer thinks | Better move |
|---|---|---|
| “Checking in” | “They want me to respond, but nothing has changed.” | Name what slows down if this waits and suggest the next step. |
| “Circling back on the proposal.” | “I need to review and decode this on my own.” | Pull out the decision they need to make and the tradeoff inside it. |
| “Are you interested in [our service]?” | “I have to figure out whether this fits my priorities.” | Tie your service to the issue they raised and recommend the next step. |
| “Have you thought about our proposal?” | “They still haven’t dealt with the real concern.” | Surface the likely objection and address it directly. |
| “Bumping this so it doesn’t fall through the cracks.” | “They want a reply, but they haven’t made this easier.” | Bring new proof, context, or an angle that makes action easier. |
Effective sales follow-up is systemic
Your sellers don’t have time to think about “what comes next”. If they’re going to sell like the founder, they need a repeatable framework in place that gets them 80% of the way there.
Why 80%?
Because you can’t expect someone to be 100% like you. But if you can get them to 80%, you can trust them enough to run the process without constantly babysitting deals.
To make that happen, you need a practical system.
What that system looks like:
- CRM with clear pipeline stages
- Automated reminders for follow-up and expansion
- Process for capturing sales data and moving deals through the pipeline
- Sales SOP that every seller follows
- Sales script for calls
- Sales pitch deck that’s 90% ready to go
- Sales enablement assets (thought leadership and case studies)
With a system in place, your seller just has to open their email, project management tool, and CRM. Then, they just follow the steps. And you run light governance.
The system simplifies the admin, giving them more time for high-level engagement. They shift their thinking from “What’s next?” to “What angle do I take next with this buyer?”
The goal is always the same: Give prospects a REASON to RESPOND.
There is a big difference between a seller emailing:
“Hey,
Just checking back to see if you had any more time to think about our proposal and discuss next steps. Happy to jump on a call later this week if you have time.
Here’s my calendar link to make it easy to find a time:
Cheers!”
vs.
“Hey
During our last chat, you mentioned concerns about [issue]. We just published [case study or thought leadership] that [connects to the issue].
Based on what we discussed, you could [solution ties to their current needs].
Would it help to walk through that [project or article ] with the senior architect?
I can set that up if you’re interested.”
One approach gives them work to do. One approach makes their life easier.
Which one do you think wins?
But you can’t do the above without a system in place.
The standard for your team
It’s a gift to have deals in the pipeline.
At the same time, if your sales team is going to blast messages to prospects, you might as well automate it with AI. It’s less expensive and just as ineffective.
But if you don’t want to be ignored at scale, you need to set up a system that empowers your team to do more than just “follow up.” It needs to give them the time and resources needed to deliver value. That’s how you close more deals faster.
You need to give your buyers a reason to respond.
Any message that falls short of that is a waste of time that trains your buyers to ignore you. And it’ll keep your founder stuck to the sales process.
