Tweet

Client Communication as Easy as A-B-C

Written by:

Article Overview: To be a successful consultative seller, you need to grow and maintain a broad base of client contacts. Before you know it, you have hundreds, even thousands of people on your contact list. Obviously it’s impossible to maintain personal contact, yet personal contact is a key to building and strengthening your client relationships.

Client Communication as Easy as A-B-C

To be a successful consultative seller, you need to grow and maintain a broad base of client contacts. Before you know it, you have hundreds, even thousands of people on your contact list. Obviously it’s impossible to maintain personal contact, yet personal contact is a key to building and strengthening your client relationships. How do you maintain and strengthen relationships with all of these people so you will be among the first – if not the first – person they remember when they have a business issue that requires your expertise? I pride myself on my follow-up skills and strive to maintain relationships with clients long after projects have been completed. But, the longer I’m in sales, or working with a particular account, the more contacts I have. Suddenly my simple approach to calling when someone comes to mind, or when my CRM system says I should, no longer works. This is the dilemma facing many of us as successful sellers. What to do? The answer: a two-pronged strategy leveraging today’s technology. Begin with a “divide and conquer” approach, categorizing your contacts into tiers. The ‘A’ tier can include top contacts or recommenders you stay in touch with regularly. These are the people least likely to slip from our sights because they will probably buy from you soon. It’s the ‘B’ and ‘C’ tiers that are the challenge. The ‘B’ tier are contacts that don’t have an immediate need, but may have one in the next 12 months. You may have done work for them before, or discussed places you can assist, but frequent communication at this point is not required. The ‘C’ tier are contacts that may someday appreciate your services, but not in the foreseeable future. While both ‘B’ and ‘C’ tier clients know you are there, you don’t want to count on them to remember to call when a need arises that you can assist with. Yet our schedules are busy and often we don’t have the luxury of calling every ‘B’ and ‘C’ client regularly to check in. Some sellers feel it is enough to hope that their paths will cross again in the future. That’s not definitive enough for me. As I look at it, there are two prongs to a strategy for staying connected and strengthening relationships with our legion of client contacts. 1. Keep our clients current on what we are focused on 2. Provide our clients with new ideas The first prong is easy. LinkedIn, the online business networking site, shows your network “what you are working on”, updating it every week, even emailing it out to your whole network of contacts you have registered. Make sure all your ‘B’ contacts are linked to you, and they can follow your activities every week as long as you keep it updated. As you speak with or think of them, link to your ‘C’ contacts. Client relationship manager and email database technologies can help with the second prong. Use the tools in your CRM to create a nearly automated communication strategy. Queue emails to connect with ‘B’ contacts every 60, 90 or 120 days. Write an email that shares a new thought, a related issue a client had and solved that would be of interest, a return on investment another client achieved and how. As your ‘B’ contacts reply, call to connect voice-to-voice. The ‘C’ tier shouldn’t require a lot of time and effort. Add them to your newsletter list, or emails you might send out regarding updates in their industry. Plan to communicate with them every 4 - 6 months. Periodically send a personal email, checking in on their summer plans, how the job is going. The email queue feature is great for these because you can be sure to connect no matter how busy you are. By dividing your contact list into tiers, and determining what you can do to effectively – and time efficiently – stay in front of them you will strengthen relationships and stay top of their mind whenever they have a need.

Related Articles
  Getting Back the Lost Client in Six Steps
  Bring the Four Swordsmen of Client Service With You
  The Four New Cs of Marketing
  Four Essentials of Effective Communication
  The Art of Effective Communication in the Small Business World

Article Tags: 12 months, business issue, client relationships, contact list, crm system, dilemma, foreseeable future, frequent communication, personal contact, pronged strategy, rsquo, tiers



Related Forum Posts
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - When I came back to Japan in 1999 I sometimes used to ask my students if they would buy anything on the Internet and at that time most thought it was too risky. I'd encourage them to try by using well known sites such as Amazon.co.jp and also pointed out that using a credit card on a reputable site was safer than using it at a restaurant. I can't remember the last time I had that discussion or when the "tipping point" occurred in Japan. To answer your other question, I use Paypal for several reasons: 1. Brand familiarity 2. Easy to use 3. Free to withdraw 50,000yen+ to my Japanese bank account - a huge benefit (but maybe other systems also offer that...?) 4. Easy to cancel subscriptions On the down side, their transaction fees are quite costly, they are difficult to contact and when disputes arise you can sometimes lose even when you can prove via your tracking service that the disputed item was "delivered" to the customer's address!
Re: Domain name sugestion - Hi Anelly, Support-Box.com sounds very good to me. Easy and catchy.
Re: Essential Leadership skills - Vision Values Mission Strategic Thinking Decision Making Communication Team Bonding People Development Coaching / Mentoring / Guiding / Grooming Presentation Thanks Robert
Delegating - Good info and interesting list. Easy to see how the authority or power is slowly passed to the person - the secret would be knowing WHEN to move to the next step. I like to avoid people who are stuck at the #1 level. Chris
Re: How Do You Fight Spam? - There are several ways in which you can stop spam: Client side: you can configure your email client to move spam to the junk mail, and you can do this by blocking their domain, some clients will even allow you to block ip blocks. Server side: you can set your server to have a white list, that can control spam before it gets to your inbox.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Digital Diet by Daniel Sieberg

The Importance of Master Data Management (MDM)

Make Small Commitments. Get Big Changes.

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.