The How to series · Post 21
Follow-ups that don't depend on remembering
For UK business owners with a small team: follow-ups happen only when somebody remembers, and the minutes cost about £1,150 a year. The misses cost more.
It's 4pm on a Tuesday. An invoice from three weeks back crosses your mind, the one you meant to chase. You can't remember whether you chased it. There's no list anywhere that knows either. The list lived in your head, and your head had other things to do.
The most expensive system in your business is your memory. Every quote and every invoice has a follow-up attached. The plan is real. The execution depends on somebody thinking of it at the right moment. Call it the remembering tax: money that only arrives if a person remembers.
That's the loop this post is about: follow-ups that live in memory, and what it costs in the weeks memory is busy.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
- 10 follow-ups owed in a typical week (quotes out, invoices unpaid)
- 5 minutes each, on the weeks somebody remembers: 50 minutes a week
- × £30 an hour = £25 a week
- × 46 working weeks = about £1,150 a year
That's only the minutes, and the minutes are the small part. The tax is the misses: the invoice chased a month late, the quote that went quiet because the nudge lived in somebody's head on a bad week. One forgotten chase on an £800 invoice costs more than a year of the minutes. How often that happens, nobody can tell you, because the misses are the one thing nobody tracks. That's what makes it a tax rather than a cost: recurring and invisible, and you pay it whether you notice it or not.
Score it: the three checks
The same three checks we use everywhere:
- Hours. How much of the week it eats (0 to 5)
- Repeat. Could a new starter follow it from one page? (0 to 5)
- Risk-if-wrong. If it slips once, how bad? (0 to 5. High means the rules are obvious and a slip is recoverable)
The remembering tax scores Hours 2 (the minutes are small, which is the reason nobody ever fixes it), Repeat 5 (the whole thing is one page: who gets chased, on which day, with which two lines), Risk-if-wrong 4 (a polite nudge sent twice reads as organised, and anything delicate is caught at approval).
Two checks at 4 or more: start narrow. One list, one cadence: every unpaid invoice gets a day 7 nudge and a day 14 second nudge, drafted and approved. Memory leaves the job.
Try one thing this week (free)
On Monday, write down every follow-up you're owed, from memory: quotes out with no reply, invoices unpaid, replies you promised somebody, documents you said you'd send. Keep the paper. On Friday, go back and tick the ones that actually got chased. The unticked lines are the remembering tax, measured in your own handwriting. That's the number to judge the week on.
Where a person stays
The machine holds the list and drafts the nudge on day 7 and again on day 14, and nothing sends on its own. A person approves whatever goes out, and keeps the judgement calls: who gets a softer word, which account needs a phone call instead. When a discount enters the conversation, that's a human decision too. Money and anything compliance-shaped stay approval-only. Follow-ups stop depending on anyone having a good week. The deciding never leaves the person.
FAQ
A reminder fires, and the nudge still has to be written and sent by whoever is busiest that day. Reminders depend on people. A cadence that drafts the nudge and waits for approval depends on nothing but the calendar.
A short nudge on day 7 and a plainer one on day 14 reads as organised, and customers regularly say the thing owners don't expect: you actually got back to me. Done well, people feel looked after, not chased.
The judgement calls: discount conversations, accounts with history, renewals, anything where the wrong sentence costs a relationship. Those stay human-only. The cadence carries the routine chases so the person has room for the ones that need a person.
Same shape, different list. Quotes get chased for a decision, invoices for payment. The cadence is identical: day 7, day 14, two lines, approved before sending. Most businesses start with invoices, because money arriving late is the clearest version of the problem.
Run the free test above: Monday's list against Friday's ticks. The gap between the two is the remembering tax in your numbers, and it's the only figure worth arguing about.