14 July 2009 4 Comments

How to Turn Old Contacts into New Clients

You know that your old clients and contacts are your best sources of new business and referrals.

You’ve even got a pretty good “little black book” of names – people who already know, like and trust you. People who could be good sources of referrals or even new work with their companies.

But there’s a problem.

You’re hesitating. You haven’t been in touch for over a year. You don’t want to seem like you’re “begging” for work. You don’t want to risk them seeing you as “too salesy”.

And wouldn’t they be knocking on your door if they needed your help or had a referral for you?

You’ve got to take the first step

Very many professionals find themselves in this situation. Work pressures and long hours mean they lose touch with old clients and contacts. A few months without communication can easily turn into a year. And then it becomes too embarrassing to call to re-establish contact.

In my recent article on “What to Do if You Need Sales Fast” I highlighted that one of the key criteria for someone to be able to buy from you relatively quickly is that they already have a high degree of trust in you and belief in your capabilities.

By and large, that means people who you’ve worked with before and done great work for.

But unfortunately, if you’ve dropped out of touch – they’re not going to call you. No matter how great a job you did: their minds will be filled with their own priorities.

So if you want to get back in touch – you’re going to have to take the first step.

How to re-establish contact without embarrassment

Many professionals are concerned that a call or email “out of the blue” will come across as desperate, or too pushy, or too “salesy”.

It won’t – if you do it right.

Think from the perspective of the contact. Would you really mind a consultant, lawyer or accountant who you worked with a while ago getting back in touch? Probably not – particularly if they did a great job for you and you got on well together.

Think of the times old contacts have got back in touch with you via Linkedin for example. Did you mind? Did you think “hmm, we haven’t spoken in ages, what are they after?”.

Probably not. And certainly not if you had a good relationship.

But what if they they started asking for business or a referral? Wouldn’t that feel a bit awkward? A bit like the only reason they got back in touch was for their benefit.

There’s a grain of truth in this. Many people would feel a bit uncomfortable if a service provider ignored them for a year and only got back in contact when they needed something from them (an important reason to keep in touch properly in between and lot lose touch, of course).

So you need to turn the situation around. You need to think about how you could be helpful to them rather than just vice versa.

What you want them to be thinking when they get your call or email is “Great. He’s created/discovered something that could be valuable for me – so he’s contacted me to let me know”.

That puts a whole new dynamic on the situation. Instead of thinking “What’s he after?” they’re thinking “That was really thoughtful”. The relationship can develop in a much more productive direction after that.

But for that perception to happen – it has to be true. You really do have to think about them first and how you can help them.

Of course, every professional could argue that everything they do is helpful and valuable to their clients. That’s the nature of their business.

And it’s true – but you need to go further. When you’re re-establishing contact you need to have some extra value to offer over and above your normal services. Something specific and timely. Something of high value to them right now – that’s why you called.

Creating Client-Focused Campaigns

An excellent way to offer this extra value is to create what I call “client-focused campaigns”.

What you do is look through your address book to identify who you would like to re-establish contact with. Then look for a common factor between them.

Are they largely in the same industry or sector? Or the same business function? Or perhaps they share a common business challenge like growth without major investment, managing talent, or dealing with redundancies. They key is that the people you want to connect with would recognise themselves as sharing that factor.

Then based on the common factor, create or repackage an “easy to digest” offer specifically for those clients.

It could be a free offer like a report (e.g. “the 5 key employment challenges faced by small manufacturers”) or a short “health-check assessment” (e.g. a 2-hour “leadership inventory” for HR directors). Or it could be an entry level service or workshop that would be paid for.

Once you have this, you have a valid business reason for reconnecting:

“Hi John – long time no speak – it was probably back on that project we did in Italy at your Modena plant.

The reason I’m calling you is that we’ve just put together a report on how biotech companies can enhance the value of the deals they do with BigPharma – and I thought you might find it useful. Do you want me to send you a copy?”

So from John’s perspective – primarily subconsciously – you’ve “proven” you’re interested and focused on helping him rather than on just thinking about what’s in it for yourself. The communication channels have been opened on a positive note and you can begin to catch up with no embarrassment.

And after John has read the report you can follow up:

“John, the reason we pulled together the report was that we’re looking to do more business with biotech companies to help them with deal values. If you were me, how would you go about establishing connections with the major biotech firms?”

And from there, John (if he so chooses) can give you his advice, offer referrals or contact names, and perhaps even say that he’d be interested in getting your help himself.

The offer has done two things. It’s got the conversation started in a positive note, and it’s re-established your credibility and perceived expertise which may have become dimmed since you were last in contact.

By the way – asking for advice like this is a great technique in itself. It’s flattering and it’s non-threatening. Next time you would like a referral for example, don’t ask “can you give me the names of …” but say “I’m looking to connect with … – if you were me, how would you go about it?”

Now you need to Act

The concept of “client-centric campaigns” provides an easy and embarrasment-free way of helping professionals re-establish connection with their valuable ex-clients and contacts. Because you’re starting off by giving tremendous value to them – you can be confident that rejection will be minimum.

But you need to make it happen.

There are three simple steps:

  1. Create your list of “people I want to get back in contact with” and review it for common factors
  2. Create your campaign offer
  3. Get back in touch – phone is best, but at a push, email will do

And if, like me,  you’ve been following Richard Wiseman’s excellent psychology-based tips on www.59seconds.biz you’ll know that the best way to beat procrastination and actually achieve something is to just get started and work on it for a few minutes.

So what are you waiting for?

Filed Under: Marketing Professional Services Tagged With: ,
10 February 2009 1 Comment

Staying “Front of Mind” with Referral Partners

One key feature of selling many professional services and other high value business-to-business products and services is that they are bought relatively rarely.

As I detailed in Three Painful Truths for Salespeople this means that whenever you make a proactive sales outreach to a potential client, the chances are very, very high that at that point in time they will not be actively looking for your type of services. In fact, they will most likely not even be aware at all that they have potential problems or needs in the areas you can help them with. And no matter how memorable your interactions with them, the reality is that a few short weeks later they will struggle to remember you.

Smart professional firms and sellers adopt a variety of tactics to overcome this with the core principle being to nuture the relationship with high potential customers over time. Each interaction – be it a call, a meeting, a useful article clipped and sent, or an email newsletter – is designed to add value to the customer/prospect and to strengthen the relationship. Done well, these approaches have a huge payoff.

But few firms adopt a similar approach to their referral partners – be they clients, ex-clients or network contacts. They may adapt the best practices of preparing for and asking for referrals – timing the request for when they have delivered value to the partner, being very specific in who they are asking to be referred to, clairfying the value the referrer and referred-to will get, etc. But these are all “outbound referrals”. A one-off contact or approach by the referral partner to introduce you to someone you want to be referred to. They suffer the same challenge as a proactive sales outreach you do yourself – the chances are that at the time of contact the prospect will not be aware of a need in the area you can help with.

By far the best sort of referral is what I call an “inbound referral” – when someone contacts your “referral partner” looking for a recommendation and you are referred then – at the point of need.

In this case the prospect is actively looking for help in your area – and the referrer’s opinion is clearly respected because they were called rather than initiating the contact.

The problem, of course, is that just like with your sales prospects themselves; you aren’t necessarily front of mind for your “referral partners”. So they may not give you a particularly strong referral. After all, how many other accountants does that lawyer you count as a partner know and refer to? How many other printers does the marketing consultant you speak to at the chamber of commerce know? Usually quite a few.

In order to get these referrals – the most valuable ones – you must be front of mind with your referral partners when they receive the call.

Now, if they are a current or recent client you have done great work for then chances are that you will be the only one referred. Or if you are part of a “leads group” like BNI – then members of that group will automatically refer to you. But these situations are in the minority for most referral situations for most professionals and sellers. In order to maximise the number of referrals you get, you need a wide network of high potential referral partners, and you must be front of mind with them despite them not being recent clients or part of a “club” with you.

How do you do this? In the same way you stay front of mind with high potential clients. You invest in and nurture the relationship. You may not be able to work with them daily or meet them every week – but you can keep in touch and you can add value to them with every interaction.

A great example of this approach comes from Paul Halliwell, the Business Development director for the Urquhart Partnership in Manchester. Paul is a great networker and keeps in contact with a wide range of professionals from allied industries – all of whom could be potential referrers at some point.

In order to build his relationship with this network (and in addition to all the normal pracitces good networkers do), Paul produces a monthly “Take 5 Minutes” newsletter. It’s the referral partner equivalent of an email newsletter to clients. Because it’s to partners it’s very relaxed in tone and just done in simple Word format manually emailed to a distribution list, rather than using HTML and an email management system. It doesn’t feel at all like a sales document. It includes some personal news, Paul’s views and reviews of local networking events he’s been to (really useful information for his contacts to know which netwokring events are going to be valuable for them) and a couple of really bad jokes.

It’s fairly simple stuff – but does involve an investment of his time. The end result is worth it though. I know many firms who provide the sort of training & recruitment services that Urquhart do – but none that keep in touch and nurture their relationship with me the way that Paul does. So when anyone asks for a recommendation for HR services, training or recruitment – guess which firm is at the front of my mind?

Ian

Filed Under: Marketing Professional Services Tagged With: , , ,