Keys to Lead Follow-Up for Professional Services

Patrick McFadden • June 28, 2018

Lead follow up is an important strategic marketing and sales practice that, when thought of correctly, never really ends. While many professional service providers try to spend as much time as possible on lead generation strategies to bring new leads in, whether through search engine optimization (SEO), advertising in publications, utilizing social media and networking sites, speaking and other channels. You might even do what you can to track leads online through programs like Google Analytics and the like.

However, how much time and effort do you put into your lead follow up system? This is an incredibly important part of the sales process, but one that many professional service providers don’t devote enough energy to.

If fact, the practice of lead follow up has changed so dramatically over the last few years that you must revisit everything you think you know about lead follow up.

What is a Lead?

A lead is  a person who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service in some way, shape, or form.

In other words, instead of getting a random cold call from someone who purchased your contact information, you’d hear from a business or organization you’ve already opened communication with.

For example, maybe you downloaded the 300,000 mile commercial fleet guide to learn more about how to get 300,000 miles out of your vehicles. If you got an email from the B2B auto care company that created the guide on their website about how they could help you take care of your commercial fleet, it’d be far less intrusive and irrelevant than if they’d just called you out of the blue with no knowledge of whether you even  care  about business vehicle maintenance … right?

And from a business perspective, the information the B2B auto care company collected about you and your vehicles from the guide would help them personalize that opening communication to meet the existing needs of the potential client.

To take control of your lead follow up system, take some of my advice below.

Follow Up on Leads Within 5 Minutes

The first important thing to note when you follow up on sales leads is that you must do so in a timely manner – 5 minutes specifically. While you might think that it’s no problem to get in touch within a couple of weeks,  plenty of research says differently.

Nearly half of all sales are made by the person who gets in touch with a lead first.

Unfortunately, a timely follow-up time isn’t always realistic when you’re a small professional service provider. You might be in the middle of a meeting or speaking engagement. If you’re serving clients globally, different time zones become a challenge, you might even be asleep when your leads raising their hand.

The numbers don’t lie, though. If you want to close more deals, you need to get in touch with your leads as quickly as possible.

Develop a Purpose For Every Contact

Once you have your lead, it’s important that you create a clear reason you’re getting in touch, one that demonstrates you understand their wants and needs and that you are the right business to help them.

What’s tough about professional services is that you’re dating before you get married, which is what makes your purpose so important. The purpose needs to reinforce that you can help them reach their goals.

In addition to your purpose, make your point of contact brief and to the point, starting every contact point with a statement such as, “The reason I’m getting in touch today is…” will help to separate you from the rest of the crowd.

But first you have to make sure you have a clear purpose for the contact.

Focus On Repeating Your Value

What I’m essentially saying here, is focus on finding ways to repeat and remind leads about the value your services can provide. Leads don’t really care about what you or your competitors sell. All they care about are that their problems are solved and that you can help them solve them.

Since it’s likely that your leads maybe getting multiple calls from multiple companies you need use repetition as a differentiator. One way to use repetition is to send a summary or meeting recap that repeats all the main points after your discovery call or consultation.

Lead follow up, just like the most effective marketing and advertising, works best through repetition. Just like marketing, advertising works best through repetition. Just like marketing, advertising works best through repetition. Just like marketing, advertising works best through repetition. Get the point?

Don’t Give Up After One Call

So many professional service providers give up on a lead after one call, the numbers don’t support this follow up practice.

In fact, if you call a prospect three times, you have an  81% chance  of getting in touch with them. Calling six times gives you a 93% chance.

So the most significant driver of lead follow up success today isn’t making one phone call, it’s making multiple phone calls. This means that on one hand, you want to get in touch with a lead as soon as possible, and on the hand you want to be calling multiple times in a short period of time.

For the best results you need to be tracking your follow-ups efforts and adhering to a proven system that works for your professional service. Whatever your data shows, create a follow-up schedule that’s realistic for you stick to. A  lead follow up system can only ever be as good as possible if it is improved and refined over time. To do this, you must continually test and measure your system and the results you achieve from it.

A Lead Follow Up System is The Solution

At the end of the day, professional service providers that are successful in closing deals do so because they have a lead follow up system.

Any well run professional service provider is a collection of systems. Billing is a system, HR is a system, Service delivery is a system, Sales is a system, Marketing is a system and one of the best ways to keep lead follow up from becoming your 10-hour job is to create a system for how you respond and engage.

There are many other important factors that lead to a successful professional service business, but nailing the points mentioned above is a great start.

What have you found to be helpful when executing your lead follow up ?

The Missing Layer in AI: Why Judgment, Not Just Data, Will Define the Next Era of Intelligence

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.

Everyone Talks About AI Judgment. We Built It.

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.

We Found the Missing Layer AI Has Been Waiting For

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
More Posts