Ok, let’s be honest. How good are you at follow up? You are in a networking meeting or at a trade show and you’re energized, caught up in the moment and have made LOTS of connections and have collected a TON of business cards. All with good intentions!
The next morning you go to work with “intentions” of following up with all your contacts. But, the demands of work, project deadlines and interruptions foil your plan, so you put it off. Before you know it, too much time has passed, you’ve forgotten exactly why you were so energized and excited about your newly made contacts. It is such an easy trap to fall into. What’s the solution?
Self-discipline! It’s up to you to keep up with the connection. You must make a commitment to routinely connect with the people you have met on a regular basis. Networking is more that just meeting someone, it’s building a relationship with your contacts based on integrity and reliability. Your contacts must get to know you, your character and your product before doing business with you. If they don’t know you and your product or service very well, then why should they do business with you?
It seems like a daunting task to stay in touch with each and every contact. It’s work too! Here is a plan and some tools to help you stay in touch on a regular basis.
Building a Sound Foundation: Maintaining a system is EVERYTHING!
o After every networking event sort the business cards you have collected into 3 groups:
o HOT, are contacts that are ready to do business with you now!
o Warm, are contacts who aren’t ready to do business together but will be soon; within 3-6 months
o cold, are those contacts who need a lot of selling to turn them around into customers
o Once you have identified a category for each contact it’s time to put them into your Contact Management System
o I identified a great program to start with in an earlier post. In case you haven’t checked it out, it’s time to now: www.FreeCRM.com
o Enter each contact into the system – this is where maintenance is EVERYTHING! It’s soooooo much easier to enter a couple of contacts at a time rather than a zillion at once!
o Hint: This would be a GREAT task to outsource to a Virtual Assistant
o When choosing a contact management system, look for one that auto-schedules contact based on the hierarchy of the lead
o Select various types of communication vehicles and the frequency of each vehicle for the contact (example; face to face meetings, drop-ins, newsletters, personal emails, handwritten notes, etc.)
o Edit the communication frequency as necessary (how often you have meetings, lunches, etc.)
o Now that you have the foundation in place, it’s time to apply tools
The Tools:
In my experience, I find the following tools to be useful in staying in touch with all my contacts regardless of rank:
o E-zines or newsletters (try www.contantcontact.com)
o QUICK online Polls
o Social Media – don’t under estimate it’s power! Try trusted forums like: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, StumbleUpon, YouTube
o Connect with all your social media platforms by using Ping.fm – enter your message once and spread it to all your social networks at one time
o E-releases – electronic press releases
o Upload to internet article banks
o eHow.com: provide product or service “how to’s” and tips
o Blog! I like WordPress.com – blog with purpose. Give your audience meaty content…don’t blog for the sake of blogging.
Many of the internet contact can be made for you through a Virtual Assistant. Find someone who is well spoken, who thinks like you and is dedicated to making results happen.
Happy connecting and relationship building!
Happy Monday! I look forward to working with you on building your business and contact database. So let’s jump right into it!
