Sales Strategy

Keep in touch with your clients and they’ll keep you busy

Many experienced salespeople have learned that they get more business from clients when they stay on their radar.  They ensure that they continue to hold “top of mind” status with their clients by systemizing client touches and communications.

Two of the easiest ways to stay in touch with clients are email updates and touch tracking.

Email updates are simply useful information that you send routinely to your clients.  You can do this as an email blast from yourself or as a company e-newsletter.  They key is to make it a regular, routine communication, and to provide information they are likely to want to read. 

Touch tracking is a systematic approach to ensuring you have personal contact with your most important clients.  Make a grid with your key clients listed along the left side, then add the different ways you personally communicate with your clients along the top.  Examples might be a phone call, a meeting, a personal email, or talking to them at a networking event.

Decide how often you should be touching your key clients, maybe weekly or monthly.  Then, every time you have a client communication, put an “X” in the box that corresponds to the communication type and the specific client.  By the end of the time period, it will become obvious who you haven’t touched, and you can proactively fill in any gaps.

Here are a couple of tips for maintaining top of mind with clients:

• Don’t email press releases and product updates to your customers – tailor the information you send to them.  It’s much better to craft a short story of how someone is using your product or service to solve a problem than it is to forward a product announcement.
• Start tracking your client touches with just a few key customers.  Then expand the list of customers you track as you get comfortable with the system.
• If it fits your style, make your email updates whimsical or edgy.  Stand out from the crowd and entertain your clients while you inform them.
• When you implement touch tracking, be discrete.  Don’t tell clients you are calling them because you haven’t talked to them for 29 days and you have to start your next calendar.  Establish a pretense for the call, a reason for talking to them that is for their benefit, not yours.