Can you hear me now? Staying connected to your clients & prospects in an uber-connected world

Are you staying connected with your prospects, clients, and friends?

Do you send out email messages to your prospects and clients?

Do you send out text messages to people you’re trying to reach?

Are you finding your people where they are and when they are there so that you can keep the relationship moving forward?

If you’re not staying connected, you are leaving way too much on the table and your competition is going to eat your lunch!

Listen in as Jennifer, Daniel, and Patricia go through some ways that you can possibly make that connection easier and never miss a prospect or client question again.

Transcript (auto-generated; may contain errors)

Welcome to another episode of “It’s the Bottom Line That Matters” podcast where we are dedicated to your success. On today’s program, we’re going to be talking about staying connected to your clients prospects, and friends. And what exactly you want to be doing to make sure that you’re staying in touch with the people that you are trying to keep in touch with.

There are so many tools out there that you can be using. Whether it’s text messaging, phone calls, direct mail, email, web chat. And the list goes on and on. There’s so many different ways that we can be communicating with our clients and prospects that we thought we should take this episode and discuss some of the best ways that you can keep in touch with your clients, and your prospects and how you want to avoid some of the issues that may come with the ease of reaching some of your people.

So, Daniel, Patricia. Good morning! Welcome to the show.

Let’s hear your thoughts about staying connected with folks.

Thanks Jennifer. Glad to be here. Yes.

You know, and the first thing that comes to my mind is, especially when coven started in the States. And, you know, everything was all shut down. Except that everything was shut down, but nobody knew what was open and what wasn’t or that had shortened hours or other whatever limitations I haven’t been in their store.

And I actually got to the point where I was calling businesses, before I left the house just to make sure.

I didn’t even before. Just as an aside just because you never know when someone’s got a closed party or whatever. True. I mean I had that with a restaurant, and they were closed for a party and we showed up trying to get takeout, and they were closed.

I didn’t mean to cut you off but no, that’s fine. You know, and it was, it went clear to the point of, I didn’t see my chiropractor for a year and a half, because I didn’t know if he was hoping for.

It was outside of their regular previous regular hours, which is no me either, or not, you know, and it’s like, Dude, are you open are not? Even a postcard would have been nice.

We’re open call us if you need us. Update your message on your answering service. We don’t have any answering service, it’s like, oh, well okay so medical professional out there with your own business, get an answering service, even if it’s an answering machine. Everybody, you all need answering services, even if it’s just an answering machine that says we’re close these are regular hours, please call back.

You know, or during this pandemic right now we’re open these are our hours, these are the limitations.

And people at least know.

But for those of you that have Google pages.

One of the things that Google has been doing especially over the last two years, has been that they’ve been sending out emails.

Are you open, you know, confirm your hours and especially around holidays.

As of the day this recording, we’re coming up to the President’s week – President’s Day holiday.

And Google has been asking, Are you open on President’s Day. Just because some businesses may be closed it is after all a federal holiday.

And so it is important when you think about what you’re doing, keeping in touch with your clients and prospects and letting them know whether or not you’re actually open is important, and it is something that you want to be updating on the web, on social.

And certainly, on any kind of answering system that you are using for your business.

That is the first thing that you definitely want to be doing.

But Daniel Let me ask you when you’re looking at keeping in touch with potential clients and clients.

What are some of the things that you are doing to make sure that you’re keeping in touch with them.

Sure. Well, one of the most important things I would say is, for every business owner who’s listening to this is do make sure that you have a communication schedule or a plan, you know, whatever you want to call it, and make sure that you are following that plan. It’s not so important necessarily that you are reaching out to and making contact with your clients say every day or every hour, you know, We don’t want to overwhelm them, but certainly if you are checking in with them on a regular basis. That’s important.

One of our favorite mentors that the three of us like to listen to is Dan Kennedy, and he talks about putting a fence around your herd. Now I don’t know if everyone out there would like to think of their customers or clients as cattle.

But anyway, to try to keep them loyal to your brand really is what you’re going after and regular communication is one of the best ways to do that. So that you’re constantly top of mind it’s a great way to inject a little bit of yourself and your personality into that communication so they get to know you on a deeper level on a more personal level, and it helps build, build a lot of that brand loyalty. So that being said.

So some of the things that I do, Jennifer: I try to use multiple methods, so I do consider my social media posts to be part of my communication method. So I use that I use email communication so I send out emails. Oh, fairly regularly will say that. And another thing I do is I actually will send out mail from time to time. I know that a lot of people say, Oh, I hate getting junk mail, and ever read it, it goes straight in the trash. Well, these days, as of the time of this recording anyway, there is less mail that is being sent out. And so your mail piece tends to stand out in the mailbox. Plus, then you’ve got something physical they have to interact with. And if you do the right things that we’ve said to do in the past about marketing.

Even if it’s just a quick communication. You can create something that will grab their attention. It’s auto pay attention to it.

And I’d like to point something out about that mail piece is that over the Christmas holiday, I got two catalogs from none other than Amazon catalog from an e-commerce online distributor mailing a catalog. What does now and if the data doesn’t say that that works they wouldn’t have done it.

Right. Well think about it from this perspective, you know there’s a lot of people that are looking at LL Bean, and Land’s End.

And those are traditionally e-commerce providers, and they still send out, you know, their catalogs as well I know Lanza and I’ve been getting quite a bit of.

And that’s actually one of the best ways to continue growing your e-commerce business and that’s for a different conversation, which actually I think we spoke about.

Recently, but in terms of the e-commerce functionality and the catalog. It’s a great way to continue building, even more of a rapport with people, and especially if you are thinking about well what am I putting out there.

And if somebody is scrolling through endless pages on a website. They’re eventually going to give up, and not want to actually do anything because, well, why am I actually doing this.

Whereas if you have a catalog. and it’s something in print.

Now you can actually look at what it is that you’re doing and just quickly page through and see if something makes you stop.

And that’s the whole idea with social also about the summer, summer is by the way if you’re not familiar with the term.

If you’re on social, especially on your phone, you’re just constantly scrolling up, you’re probably using either your thumb or your pointer finger to move the screen.

So the idea of summarize, or pointer finger us but it’s not the same.

Got it. Fine technology, if you will, terminology writers.

It’s all about what is it that’s going to make you stop and actually pay attention to what you’re seeing, and that’s the whole idea when you’re paging through a catalog, like, Patricia was saying with the Amazon catalog that she received so good going, Amazon, congratulations on that genius move yet again.

And, Yeah, but there’s a couple other things though that we haven’t touched on yet.

And that’s the idea of being in a position to be present, no matter where your clients are or your prospects that you can be talking with them whenever you want to be speaking with them — services that allow you to communicate on Facebook and WhatsApp, really easy if you’ve got a cell phone.

You can connect that to your Facebook page, you can connect that to a business phone number, as long as they can receive text messages.

And you can be communicating with potential clients and prospects through WhatsApp, everybody in the world has access.

Pretty much everybody I take that back, certain countries may be blocking access. But many people in the world have access to. WhatsApp, provided of course they’ve got internet and a cell phone, that’s another issue.

Other ways that you can be keeping in touch, are also Facebook Messenger. A lot of people are using it, easy way to stay in touch with people.

Other ways that you can be looking at it.

There’s services that allow you to have a synchronous chat with your clients or prospects, even on your website.

They can be AI-driven, or they can be direct human to human great communication.

There’s many chat platforms, as well as asynchronous platforms that allow you to communicate as well where you send the message will come back with you on a couple of hours.

So there’s a lot of different tools you can use. We personally for my business we use a system called talk to Tawk.to.

And you can certainly check that out we can put a link to that in the website, or in the description so that you can check that out as well. But the whole idea really is what are you doing to make sure that you’re keeping in touch with people.

That’s going to be really going to be making sense that you’re not going to be losing people to someone else.

And those are some great points, Jennifer. It’s great to look at all of the different communication channels out there to decide how can you reach people where they are when you want to reach them. And it is important to note that of all the communication methods already that we’ve discussed. We know that everybody always has a device in their hand.

Almost every single minute of their waking day.

So if you can reach them through text chat bot Facebook Messenger, anything like that WhatsApp, like Jennifer mentioned.

That’s an important step you can take. The other thing too is I would say, you know, as you evaluate all these different communication methods. Again, just like everything you do when you try to do marketing or anything with your members or with your clients.

Your customers think about where are they and what would their preferred communication method be you might even give them options and say do you want this or do you want that do you want both, but do go ahead and think about as many different communication channels as you possibly can and figure out how to implement as many as possible for the least cost, and with the least amount of effort.

Absolutely, it’s what can you do that’s going to be allowing you to connect and by the way just to talk about least cost and least effort, talk to that I mentioned earlier, has a completely free program.

And it’s a great way to be keeping in touch with people. So you’re going to be in a position to not miss them when they’re at a position to want to work with you.

Now one thing, of course, you are going to need to think about is, are you going to have somebody Manning your chat 24 seven, because people anywhere in the world may want to be talking with you, 24 seven, and obviously you’re not going to be sitting in front of your computer, the entire time. So you want to think about what you do with that. But putting that aside, though, as it relates to what it is that you’re doing on your overall communication strategy.

There really is an important idea of where you’re going to want to go and how you’re going to want to keep in touch with what you’re doing. So as we look at other areas.

I mean direct mail we mentioned the Amazon catalog.

Daniel, Are you utilizing direct mail in your business in any manner shape or form at the moment?

I am Yes.

So I use Postcards from time to time to reach out to people as a way to either open the door or as a follow up it’s part of maybe an email and a call sequence.

So I’ll use postcards for that. I also send cards to my clients on a regular basis, so I pick a few holidays throughout the year and then of course their birthday, send them a birthday card to.

And then there’s a system I like to use and it’s really easy to set that up and that’s all automated as well.

And there’s even services, By the way, such as handwrytten – Handwrytten.com. Just doing a shout-out for them, David Wachs, who’s the CEO there.

He and I are connected, and it’s a great way to think what you can do when you’re setting out personalized cards, and a handwritten font.

He’s actually got robots that can take your handwriting and send out notes cards, all of that for you. And if you want to do those birthdays you want to do a thank you note, whatever it is that you want to do.

You simply send it in, and you can get those cards sent or those notes send for pretty inexpensive.

And we all know that when you get a piece of mail, not an email, but a piece of mail.

It’s going to stand out a little bit more than the thousands of junk email solicitations that you’re getting in your inbox. I don’t know about you guys, I know for me, I average about 600 pieces of email every day.

And I mean that’s just ridiculous. I can’t even keep up with the amount of incoming mail I have.

And in my personal mailbox I at least use a service unroll me. For those of you that don’t know that by the way for Google for Gmail. It is absolutely an incredible service, unrolled.me is the URL for that that you can sign up and it’s completely free to sign up, you just throw all of your mail in there, and you just check the box every now and then to see what actually did come in. But in terms of looking at it with other ways Patricia, are you using direct mail me come back to you on that question before we look at other things, not currently but I will be in the near future.

And it’s really an interesting way to look at it and by the way direct mail does not have to be huge campaign.

It can be one, two, mailings like Daniel was mentioning sending out birthday cards, sending out postcards.

You can be sending out 10 of them you can be sending 1000 you can be sending 100,000.

At the end of the day is just what are you utilizing to reach the people that you’re trying to actually connect wise.

So as we look at other areas. Are there other ideas that we haven’t mentioned that we should be talking about. Well one of the things that comes to mind mine Jennifer is, if you’re going to communicate with your customers or clients on a regular basis. What do you say.

So, Patricia has already given us several ideas. Maybe if there’s a change in your business hours or your business practices you might want to alert your customers or clients to that and so obviously sales that are coming up would be something that you would want to communicate about.

You don’t want to be the person who only reaches out when you have something to sell.

There should be other reasons that you’re reaching out and you’re talking to your customers or clients to wish them a happy Valentine’s Day wish them a happy May Day, without any other message that’s going out.

If you’ve got a longer form communication that you’re sending out, maybe it’s an email maybe it’s some kind of a newsletter electronic or print, you know, share some things about yourself, make it a little personal whatever communication channel you choose, choose some things that are non-business focused.

So that not everything you’re sending is all about, buy buy buy buy from me by for me it’s a sale and constantly pounding them over the head. Give them other reasons to open your communication so that every time you send something they’ll be excited and interested in what you have to say.

Absolutely having something exciting and interesting with what you’re going to say but here’s the other thing, if you are going to be messaging them, have it in a regular consistent way.

So if you’re going to be sending a note Monday morning. Every week, Monday morning every week should be when that note is actually going out.

It shouldn’t be Tuesday afternoon, if you have a weekly message that’s going out on Monday.

And it’s also the same with the sender. If the sender is Joe Schmo, then it should be, Joe Schmo who’s doing the sending every time it shouldn’t be Joe Schmo and then Jane Doe, and Johnny Twilight. Who’s going to be sending out the messages, all the time just because it’s going to ruin the consistency and the connection that you’re going to be having between you and your prospects and customers, which is really important when you think about that connection.

Anything else that you guys want to add before we wrap up.

That’s the extent of what I was thinking of today Yeah.

Patricia?

Yeah, it’s interesting because people want to go to, you know, let’s say you’ve got people on a drip campaign which is great.

And then you want to go to, you know, oh I think I’ll just email them once a month.

It’s not often enough to keep your email in a place where they’re even going to see it.

So you have to do it at least once a week, you know that certain time that certain day.

I know people that email every day and I’m not sure how they come up with all the content actually but, you know, and not that I read it every day but you know every once in a while there’s something interesting and I have to open it for you.

So absolutely, more as some, as long as it’s still valuable more is going to be better than less.

Agreed. So as we think about keeping in touch with your clients and prospects. You want to be thinking, really, what is your long term plan with the campaigns to be keeping in touch with everybody that you’re trying to keep in touch with us.

If you know that the reason is it’s going to build loyalty.

Keep that in mind in terms of what you’re trying to do.

If what you’re trying to do is simply answered customer calls and loyalty doesn’t matter.

And I’m thinking about the cable companies as an example and you all know exactly what I mean, it’s the same idea right i mean you’re simply answering a call, you’re not trying to hold any kind of loyalty.

And so, when you’re thinking about what you’re trying to do, look at the overall direction.

And the brand importance of each of those channels, and make sure that each channel is still delivering the same level of value, that the others are going to be delivering.

In other words, if the phone support is stellar, but online.

It’s terrible. or vice versa.

Where are you actually going, people are not going to want to keep in touch with you in different channels, and by the way that applies also if you want people tweeting you for customer service.

Make sure that you’re responding to those tweets.

There’s several companies that when you tag them on social and it doesn’t matter Facebook, Twitter, any platform. They’re not looking at that to even respond to your post or your comment, when you’re having a problem.

And so if you’re saying, “tweet us” or “connect with us,” following you, is not connecting with you.

Right. I’m not necessarily interested in hearing when you’re going to have a sale. If I have a problem.

If I send you a note, and I need the assistance, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. So when you think about what you’re doing, make sure each channel is delivering on the same level of value and service that you’re applying to the others.

On that note, this has been another episode of “It’s the Bottom Line that Matters” and until next time, here’s to your success.

Tool mentioned: Tawk.to