{"id":784989,"date":"2022-08-26T05:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T10:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=784989"},"modified":"2022-08-25T14:05:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T19:05:25","slug":"why-first-time-guest-follow-up-matters-and-isnt-as-annoying-as-you-might-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/why-first-time-guest-follow-up-matters-and-isnt-as-annoying-as-you-might-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Why First-Time Guest Follow Up Matters (and Isn&#8217;t as Annoying as You Might Think)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you want to divide a room full of church staff members, toss out a fun topic like <\/span><del><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Calvinism<\/span><\/del><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><del>.<\/del> Oops. I mean first-time guest (FTG) follow up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(That paragraph was predestined to be unfunny.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are multiple reasons that FTG follow up isn&#8217;t at the top of most of our priority lists: we view it as a great idea&#8230;<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">for someone else on our team<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. We see it as a necessary evil&#8230;not something we <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">want<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to do, but something we <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">have<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to do. We look at it as an interruption to our day&#8230;as an unwanted intrusion on the part of our guest&#8230;as an investment of time with no measurable return.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I would argue that FTG follow up is one of the most important things we can do, and it&#8217;s something our guests both want <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> need.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let&#8217;s take five bullet points and systematically destroy those above arguments:<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>1. Follow up is assumed by your first-timers.<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If a FTG stops by your<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dfranks.com\/2016\/03\/14\/six-reasons-you-need-a-first-time-guest-tent\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">tent<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, fills out a<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/dfranks.com\/2017\/02\/01\/qa-how-do-we-get-guests-contact-information\/\"> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">card<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in service, or otherwise lets you know they&#8217;re present, there is an inherent assumption that you&#8217;re going to follow up with them. To do so isn&#8217;t an intrusion&#8230;it&#8217;s an expectation. To <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">fail to do so<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> leaves a part of the introductory process to your church undone.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>2. Follow up is <\/b><b><i>mostly <\/i><\/b><b>appreciated.<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In hundreds (maybe thousands?) of FTG calls I&#8217;ve made over the years, the opening script is mostly the same:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Me: Hello, is this Bob?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob: [deep sigh] Uh, yesss.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Me: Hi Bob, my name is Danny, and I&#8217;m one of the pastors at the Summit Church&#8230;<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bob: [suddenly sucking that sigh back in, brightening up] Oh, hey! How are you?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The point is that Bob &#8211; like all of us &#8211; assumes that this unknown caller is trying to sell him something. Once he discovers that I&#8217;m just making a friendly follow up call, he opens up. Our guests really do appreciate that personal touch (and in our case, have told us so&#8230;more on that in #3). And out of those many, many calls over the years, I can count on two hands the number of calls that maybe <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">weren&#8217;t<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> so much appreciated. (Maybe I shouldn&#8217;t have tried to sell them an extended warranty on their car.)<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>3. Follow up really does lead to lasting connections.<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So many of our staff have shared stories of church members coming up to them months or years later, saying something like, &#8220;You know, you&#8217;re the reason that I stuck around.&#8221; A little digging points back to that first phone call&#8230;a phone call that the staff member has long since forgotten, but the guest remembers all too well. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The call makes a really large church feel small, it gives a guest a specific point of connection, and it helps them know that there&#8217;s someone in their corner.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>4. Follow up keeps us tethered to those we serve.<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For church staff members from the lead pastor to the intern, there is no better grounding than a FTG follow up call. When we ask the guest &#8220;How was your experience?&#8221; they tell us. Those weekly conversations remind us who we&#8217;re here for, how our weekends are perceived, and what actually connects with &#8211; or confuses &#8211; our guests. I would make the argument that anyone on the payroll at a church should have FTG follow up as part of their job description. (Okay, maybe not the people <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in charge of<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the payroll. They&#8217;re usually scary.)<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>5. Follow up narrows down the menu and gives them a map.<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In #3 above, I said that follow up makes a large church feel small. And before you argue that you&#8217;re <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a large church, keep in mind that anything new feels big and overwhelming. So that call helps you help the guest: what&#8217;s their best next step? How can they get this particular question answered? What makes the most sense for them in this point of their journey?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I tell our team all the time: in the five minutes <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">before<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I make follow up calls, it&#8217;s the moment of my week I dread the most. But in the five minutes <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">after<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I know it&#8217;s the best investment of my time I can possibly make.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dfranks.com\/2021\/12\/07\/why-first-time-guest-follow-up-matters-and-isnt-as-annoying-as-you-might-think\/\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This post originally appeared on dfranks.com<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you want to divide a room full of church staff members, toss out a fun topic like Calvinism. Oops. I mean first-time guest (FTG) follow up. (That paragraph was predestined to be unfunny.) There are multiple reasons that FTG follow up isn&#8217;t at the top of most of our priority lists: we view it&#8230;","protected":false},"author":8242,"featured_media":784991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,179,175,186,177,178,180,176,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-first-impressions","category-grow","category-health-and-metrics","category-lead","category-membership-and-assimilation","category-outreach-and-evangelism","category-revitalize","category-staff-and-organizational-issues"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why First-Time Guest Follow Up Matters (and Isn&#039;t as Annoying as You Might Think) | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There are multiple reasons that first-time guest follow up isn&#039;t at the top of most of our priority lists: we view it as a great idea...for someone else on our team. We see it as a necessary evil...not something we want to do, but something we have to do. We look at it as an interruption to our day...as an unwanted intrusion on the part of our guest...as an investment of time with no measurable return.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/why-first-time-guest-follow-up-matters-and-isnt-as-annoying-as-you-might-think\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why First-Time Guest Follow Up Matters (and Isn&#039;t as Annoying as You Might Think) | Church Answers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are multiple reasons that first-time guest follow up isn&#039;t at the top of most of our priority lists: we view it as a great idea...for someone else on our team. 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