MoosedMoosed Sales Academy · Beginner — Foundations · B9
B9 — Follow-Up Basics
*Source map: M9 (follow-up discipline) + Reignition Rule (Rules v12) +
inbox-hygiene & recontact playbook (cadence table) + Girard follow-up
spine (library: old-school masters). Sitz time: ~30 min.*
Learning objectives
By the end of B9 you can:
- 1. Explain why follow-up is the business — Girard's Law of 250 and the
Ferris wheel.
- 2. Build a follow-up plan before the day starts: who, when, with what
purpose — every contact ending in an appointment or a decision step.
- 3. Apply the Reignition Rule: what "stale" means, the 24-hour wait, and
what a reignite touch looks like.
- 4. Run the recontact cadence by timeline type (active / warm / long /
none given) without ever breaching the caps.
- 5. State what closes a lead — and what never does.
Lesson script (narration)
[SLIDE: B9 title — "Follow-Up Basics" — Ferris wheel graphic]
TRAINER: (Walls, spoken.) "Unsold buyers are not dead buyers.
Worked systematically, they're where next month's deals already sit.
This module is the least glamorous in the course and the one that pays
for all the others.
"The proof is a hundred years old and it sold more cars than anyone
before or since. Joe Girard sold 13,001 cars, one at a time, retail —
a Guinness record 1,425 in a single year — and he did it on follow-up.
Every buyer of his got a card from him every month. Thirteen thousand
cards a month at his peak, each one saying, in effect: *I like you. I
haven't forgotten you.* His Law of 250: every customer is connected
to about 250 people. Delight one, you gain a doorway to 250. Burn one,
you lose 250. And his Ferris wheel: customers ride a wheel — they
buy, they leave your sight, and in time they come back around into the
market. How you treated them on the last ride decides whose lot they
step onto next. Follow-up is not a task in this store. Follow-up is the
business."
[SLIDE: "The plan comes first" — day-plan graphic]
"So follow-up here is a system, not a mood. **The plan is built before
the day starts**: who gets contacted, when, and with what purpose —
decided at the desk, not improvised between customers. Fast, on
schedule, with a purpose. Every contact ends in an appointment or a
decision step. Timed inside 9 AM–7 PM Eastern. And it stops when the
buyer stops it — follow-up that won't stop isn't discipline; it's the
thing we rejected."
[SLIDE: "The Reignition Rule" — TRACK frame]
"Now the rule that runs our inboxes — the Reignition Rule, word for
word from doctrine: we don't decide if it is done. A thread whose
last customer move was a weak reply — vague, one-word, a bare YES with
nothing after it — or no reply at all, is stale, not closed. Stale
leads get reignited: a fresh touch that re-opens the conversation.
The timing is exact: give 24 hours from the customer's last
activity before the reignite touch. If the 24 hours have already
passed, the reignite goes at the next working pass inside send hours.
If the window completes after the 7 PM cutoff, the lead is logged
REIGNITE-PENDING with its eligible time and goes in the next
window. And reignition honors every guardrail you already know: opt-in
required to text (no opt-in → the permission-template re-request),
the 48-hour rule, zero assumptions, and the cadence caps — next slide."
[SLIDE: "The cadence" — cadence table graphic]
"The recontact cadence, by the timeline the customer gave us:
- Active timeline (buying now): at most 1 ping per day, max 3
pings. Then archive as Stale with a revival date 14 days out.
- Warm (a few weeks out): ping every 7 days, max 3. Revival at
their stated horizon.
- Long timeline: touch every 30 days, aligned to the date they
gave. Archive between touches.
- No timeline given: ping at day 3, day 10, day 30 — then archive
as Stale on a 30-day revival cycle.
"Any reply resets the clock. And the archive is a pause with a
date on it, not a trash can: every working pass checks the archive for
threads whose revival date has arrived and brings them back to life.
The live inbox holds live action only; the archive holds the future.
"One more rhythm, the simple one you'll use daily: the **day-after /
week-after** habit. A customer who visited and didn't buy hears from
you the next day — thank-you plus the one open question from their
visit — and again the following week if the timeline supports it,
inside the cadence above. And the sold customer is never dropped:
Girard's monthly touch, modernized — a text or call that asks how the
car's treating them. That's the Ferris wheel being oiled."
Word tracks (TRACK)
Follow-up contact:
"Following up on [the conversation, named specifically]. Nothing
about your situation has been forgotten here. The next step is
still [the step] — [day] or [day]?"
Reignite touch (stale thread, 24h elapsed):
"Hey {Name}, this is [your name] at your store. I had a minute
and your search came back to mind — did you find a vehicle yet?"
Sold-customer touch (Ferris wheel):
"Hey {Name}, [your name] at your store. Just checking in — how's
the [vehicle] treating you?"
Photo job aid — desk card B9
FOLLOW-UP IS THE BUSINESS (GIRARD: 250 PER CUSTOMER)
- Plan before the day: who · when · what purpose. Every contact ends
in an appointment or a decision step.
- STALE ≠ CLOSED. Weak reply or no reply → REIGNITE after 24h. No
opt-in → permission re-request. Inside send hours only.
- Cadence: Active ≤1/day ×3 → archive, revive +14d · Warm every 7d ×3
→ revive at their horizon · Long every 30d on their date · None:
day 3 / 10 / 30 → 30-day revival cycle. Any reply resets the clock.
- Day-after + week-after for every unsold visit. Sold customers get
the monthly touch — forever.
- Closes only when the CUSTOMER decided (see B8).
Floor drill — partner role-play
Plan-before-contact drill (from M9). Partner A receives a set of six
scripted unsold-buyer cards (last contact, timeline type, what was —
and was not — promised; one card is a STOP, one is a bare-YES stale
thread 30 hours old, one is a sold customer). A builds the written
plan — buyer, day, purpose, channel — then executes two contacts live
(one phone, one thread) against Partner B.
Trainer watches for: the plan exists BEFORE any contact is made;
the STOP card is excluded without prompting; the bare-YES card is
reignited, not closed; both executed contacts end in an appointment or
a decision step; every time inside the window.
Practice self-check (ungraded)
- 1. A customer's last activity was a one-word "ok" — 30 hours ago, no
opt-out, opted in. Status? Action? Timing?
- 2. A warm-timeline lead ("maybe next month") got ping #2 today. When
is ping #3, and what happens after it?
- 3. Explain the Law of 250 to a new hire in two sentences.
- 4. A lead replied this morning. What happens to their cadence clock?
Field assignment (same day)
Build tomorrow's follow-up plan tonight: pull your your CRM book, list
every unsold buyer due a touch tomorrow with timeline type, purpose,
and channel; mark the reignite-pending items with their eligible
times. Work the plan tomorrow inside the window and log outcomes in
the five-part note format. File the plan + outcomes to your record.
Institute media note: the narrated video for this module is in preparation (neutral-script re-render). The lesson above is the complete taught standard.
Module media & materials
Slide deck (PDF) · Job aid / desk card (PDF)
Narrated video: in preparation (neutral-script re-render). The full lesson text above is the taught standard.
Enrolled learners: record this unit on your learner record from your course page. Reading is open to everyone; progress, the end-of-course test (B10), and certificates live on the learner record.