A buddy of mine emailed me for advice recently. He’d had a great meeting with a potential client, felt good about it, but then neither he nor the prospect had followed up since. And now, a month had gone by.

There’s a tendency to overthink these situations. My technique is always to aim for directness, to call the thing what it is. In this case, my buddy goofed by not having sent a follow-up sooner. Okay. Now what?

Here’s the email I recommended my friend send:

I wanted to check in. I really enjoyed our conversation last month and would love to check in on the status of those two deals you were working on. Looking forward to hearing any updates, because I remain excited about the possibility of working together!

That’s it. Nothing fancy. I don’t go deep on the fact that I waited too long to email you. I’m certainly not looking to make you feel guilty for not writing me sooner, but I’m also not beating myself up. Maybe there’s even a tiny win I can subtly take here, from the fact that I was chill and patient and not crazily in your face after our initial meeting.

We all get too busy and we’ve all missed followups. When it happens, fix it without drama by sending the right message — even if it’s later than it should have been.