2014 Prospecting- The Personal Touch
In this day and age of texts, e-mail, social media and a multitude of other communication mediums, most sales professionals tend to overlook the benefits of more personal touches that our clients really appreciate. Personal touches are very powerful because they show your clients that you’ve taken time out of your busy day to show that you really care. Of course, it’s impossible to take the time to have a personal touch with every prospect and client. These very powerful, yet time-consuming touches should be saved for your best prospects, and top clients and advocates.
Consider the following examples of personal touches:
- Instead of posting a birthday or anniversary wish on Facebook, you get a birthday card, write a personal note and send it to your client.
- Instead of scanning an e-mailing an article you’ve identified as being ideal for a hot prospect, you take the magazine article with a post-it that says: “I thought you would appreciate this article, All the best”. and mail it to them.
- Instead of Direct Mailing a Market Report to the best people in your sphere of influence, you drop one off to them with a personal note on a key point in the report that impacts them.
- Instead of calling a past client to thank them for a referral, you get them a gift card and send it to them with a thank you note.
- Instead of e-mailing a generic message to your top 100 advocates and past clients, you buy a nice holiday card and write a personal note that shows you care.
In each of the above examples, the extra thought may take more time, but the recipient of the message will feel like you really care about them. After all the wonderful technology and new ways to communicate, we’re still all human beings and appreciate personal touches.