Do you resent getting spam email and junk faxes as much as you used to resent telemarketing solicitations during your dinnertime? If you feel that strongly about it, its a safe bet that the majority of your clients and prospects fell the same way. Your challenge is to create informative touches that will help open the door to your new customers and not fuel this resentment. If frequent, informative messages are effective in building more business, how do you actually get your customers and prospects to read them? There are 5 basic steps to achieve success. 1. Find out who the correct person is in the organization for your specific services or products. Do not ever send anything to Whom it may concern or Manager or Business owner or any other generic title. For email, this usually means the info@ or sales@ or other generic addresses are sure to be deleted before they find the correct person. You must take the time to get a good list with the appropriate person named. Or, make the phone calls yourself to confirm the name of the person (with correct spelling) whom you want to contact. While you are making the call, ask for their email address and permission to send the email as well. They will be impressed that you asked before sending. 2. Mail an initial contact piece via direct mail. This may be a letter, a postcard, or some other piece of personally addressed mail. But here the message is critical. Do not say, I would like to introduce This approach is self-serving and BORING. It will go directly into the recycling box. Always make every piece of mail something that can directly benefit the person reading it. This is not an easy task, but it will pay off handsomely when you accomplish it. 3. Mail a second contact piece. Perhaps a copy if an article that you thought they would find helpful (of course, it would be fantastic if you wrote it). Or your newsletter with an appropriate passage highlighted for them. Make it something unique and personally geared towards their business. 4. Call them personally. You may be surprised and get through to them directly. Be prepared to mention the items you recently sent and then go directly into the reason for your call and state the benefit for them. For example: I recently sent you an article I thought you might find helpful and today Im calling you because _____ (fill in the blank with the benefit). If you get their voice mail, you can leave a similar message and if the benefit is real, they will return your call. 5. Stay in touch with them through consistent, varied, beneficial messages. This is a great time to occasionally use email. But do not overdo it. Only use these for time-sensitive issues or other unique offers. Otherwise you run the risk of alienating your contact by sending seemingly repetitive, inappropriate emails. Once you have built a level of trust and have developed a reputation for giving valuable advice to your prospects and clients, they will welcome your contact and look forward to your calls, letters and newsletters. This is the point when your business will begin to snowball. Soon, they will be calling you for help, and your consistent contacts will pay off nicely. |
