Practical Tips

There’s gold in that list!

Whether you’re in business or you’re employed, you’ve probably built up an extensive list of contacts over the years. People who know you, probably like you, and maybe even trust you. People who could provide you with other contacts, do business with you, or just lend a friendly ear when necessary.

If you’re like most of us, you probably make contact with them once in a blue moon. However, have you ever wondered what opportunities you might be missing out on because you don’t make the effort to stay in contact?

Here are a couple of recent examples of what can be achieved:

A colleague of ours has a list of people who at some stage in the last few years expressed an interest in his services. For one reason or another nothing came of it at the time, so the contact went cold.

I suggested to him that he set up a schedule to call these people and just see how they were, what was going on with them and their businesses. Initially reluctant, he did contact them.

Well the results are impressive. After just a few calls, he got three hot leads, one of which has already converted into business. People told him that he’d called at “just the right time”.

Well, in my book there’s no such thing as coincidence. If you’re constantly in contact with people, you’ll set yourself up to always be there at the “right time”.

Take another colleague. He told me today, that after attending one of our talks, he’d starting contacting people he hadn’t spoken with for four to five years. To his surprise, people remembered him and he looks like getting business from this activity.

Wendy Evans in her book, “How to get new business in 90 days and keep it forever” makes some interesting observations regarding frequency of contact.

She states that you need to contact people at least once every 90 days or you risk them going to the opposition.

This is an example out of her book.

Working with the Intercontinental Hotel Group in Melbourne, she kept in contact with major players in the travel industry daily. She grew the business from 200 room nights per month to 2001 per month.

Then head office in NY asked her to create a training course on how she did it. Locked away for about 4 months, she wasn’t out there. For the first 3 months room rates stayed at the highest levels ever. Then in the first week of the fourth month the bookings crashed.

The travel industry gave all their bookings, and more, to the Hilton Group who’d just come out with a special promotion.

She gives lots of other examples of the same phenomena when she’d worked for organisations such as Kimberly Clark and Saatchi & Saatchi.

People don’t want to forget you, but they have lots of stuff on their minds. It’s up to you to keep at the top of their minds and constantly let them know what you offer and how you might be able to make their lives easier.

You can do this via email, phone calls, letters or postcards. Yes, it takes effort, but the rewards are worth it. In the words of a famous shoe company - “Just do it”.

Rashid Kotwal
http://www.revealedresources.com

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