• Newsletter Sign Up

• Business Links

  • AHRI
  • David Allen
  • Fistful of Talent
  • HR Magazine
  • HR Thoughts
  • Incentive Intelligence
  • Life Hacker
  • Personal MBA
  • Productivity 501
  • The Coaching Institute

• Friends n Mentors

  • Miles Burke
  • Steve Pavlina

• Categories

  • Achievement (1)
  • Blogging (6)
  • Business (21)
  • CRM (10)
  • Development (19)
  • Education (2)
  • Goals (3)
  • Hacks (2)
  • HR (1)
  • Leadership (3)
  • Management (14)
  • Not for Profit (1)
  • Productivity (2)
  • Sales (3)
  • Start Up (1)
  • Success (21)
  • TGIF (1)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • Vision (1)

• Tags

  3 12 elements alignment Business financial crisis goal Management manager managers managing momentum Productivity staff retention Success team member Vision
• 

I got a letter from my broker the other day. Good to know he’s staying in touch. Not like most brokers who promise the world and you never hear from them again. The only problem was this letter was to invite us to a new home buyer’s seminar. We have bought and sold quite a number!

Right intention, poor execution.

We bought a car 4 years ago. Brand new. When the sales person moved car yards we received a letter from him letting us know and, if we were ever shopping for a car, please come in and see him. Feel free to refer friends. Nice enough. Except my name isn’t Paul!

Why is it so hard to get customer relationships right?

These errors mentioned above are, to some degree, small issues that maybe I should just get over. I’m just being small minded and picky.

Yet … and yet!

These people were trying to do something that should have been easy to do.

The car dealer signed me up for a car. I had to fill in legal forms with full name etc. How could you get that wrong?

My broker, who is a good friend and I will chat with him to assist him in this, was also trying to be ahead of the game. But what went wrong? Surely a simple flag on my account or something. The other point of issues was this was a snail mail letter. Let’s say he sent out 250 to make it a worthwhile mailing. That is $250 he spent with a flawed qualifying mechanism. At least an email would have been cheaper, could have been even further personalised and include links with valuable information.

A database needs updating.

In his great book First Things First, Stephen Covey recounts an anecdote someone told him: “Without a gardener, there is no garden.” This applies so well to CRM and databases. Without good information, constant updating you may as well not even have a database.

And yet, as you constantly update the database you wonder why you have to enter so much information. (For a full profile checkout Harvey Mackay’s Mackay 66! Now that is a profile!) The value of information in a database is never realised until you extract it.

Why flag my home buyer status? Why spell my name right? Simply because one day you’re going to use it and if it is wrong it blows up in your face.

It isn’t that hard. Updating a database is the easiest thing in the world. But it is the difference between significant success and the also rans.

Someone said that successful people don’t do anything different to unsuccessful people, it’s just that what they do accomplish they accomplish more often, better every day.

Introduction

Customer contact is essential in a fast paced business world. Many professionals and small businesses live off their customer contact but to many it is ad hoc and with too much strategy. Many still find it difficult to set up a strategy that will make life easier for them and better for their clients. The following points will provide and framework and kick start to those wishing to bite the bullet and create a process that is both positive and profitable.

1. Develop a 12 month Customer Contact Plan

• Creating such a plan provides you with a broader view and allows you to ’see’ where your activity time is being spent.
• To enhance the plan consider using ‘colour codes’ to identify areas of commonality and where leverage can be gained.

2. Identify customer ‘types’ and market accordingly

• By ‘grouping’ client types you will be able to market more effectively and also begin to know where your business comes from.
• This will also allow you to react/respond differently and with ‘intention’ to each group.

3. Complete standard items in ‘chunks’ to save time and increase visibility

• Identify items like writing out cards (birthday, Christmas, other seasonal cards) and take the time to write them all out at one time.
• This will save time in the long run.
• Sort each card into date order and place in tickler file. When the day arrives (or a week prior) send out the card.

4. Invest in technology to automate newsletters/messages

• There is considerable technology that can automate messages for you. Investigate some of these.
• These will allow you to write a few regular newsletter at once and then set them up to go out at regular intervals.

5. Create ‘contact points’ throughout the year

• Key clients may require a visit, an extra call or a personal note. Diarise appropriate times up front so you are well prepared.

Steps 6 - 10.1 next week!

Blogging has become the communication tool de joeur.

It is a magnet for building communities, momentum around issues, (abusing people) and engaging audiences in some form from all over the world.

But is there a point where you don’t blog?

What prompted this line of thinking was a thought about which industries might actually be hurt by blogging.

Take Banks for example. Once a shining light of credibility and integrity they have slipped back recently to be just above carsales people in trustworthiness according to a few surveys (Still looking for the formal results, will come back to you.)

I would have thought a blog by a bank on customer service or updating their members/customers on upcoming changes would be a superb idea to get the engagement happening and by opening up the two way communication, actually build loyalty through openness and transparency.

However, a summary search on Google, brings the banks up a little short. Zero on page one of a search of “bank blogs”.

So is it a case of no bank blogs because:

1. We don’t have the time (really, who does?)
2. We don’t know what the reaction will be (that’s half the point - plus you can moderate comments)
3. What’s a blog? (Er, ok!)

Having been in banking for the past 20 odd years and knowing the actual person who would be responsible for this in a few banks, I can see a world of possibilities and a world of wins.

But in the broader sense, would it be commercial suicide for an industry like banking & finance to run a blog? A legal minefield?

I believe banks would actually gain some serious momentum in customer loyalty circles with a well managed, open and honest blog.

Here are the top 10 benefits of a blog for industries like banks:

1. communicate directly with customers
2. create announcements around significant changes at no cost
3. supply information customers can comment on
4. build loyalty through ongoing community contact
5. viral communication of bank policies
6. real issues being raised and dealt with
7. customers supplying workable cost saving solutions
8. banks re-inventing their ‘personalities’
9. reduction in complaints being escalated to ombudsman level
10. communication of resolutions to common problems

It is true this can be accomplished by a website but not in the same communicative way a blog can.

I’ve focused on banks here, as I said because that is my background, but there must be other industries where blogging hasn’t caught on and yet could make a difference.

Enlighten me!

When will the business world get a clue and realise that CRM is NOT about software? The amount of IT specialists who rant about how great their software package is almost makes me sick. If it isn’t borne out of self interest I don’t know what is.

How hard is it to set up a clear strategy about what you want out of CRM before you go shelling out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars setting up the system? But the It companies won’t tell you that. Oh, they’ll say you have to have a strategy but they will still try to get you to take the wrapping of their brand new software before that’s anywhere near finished or scoped out.

We recently took hold of a package and, 12 months later, we’re finally getting the training! As well as that, we received the strategy planning document just 4 months ago (8 months after getting the software!)

Customer contact is essential for success in our fast paced business world. Many professionals and small businesses live by their customer contact But to many it is ad hoc and without too much strategy. Many still find it difficult to set up a strategy that will make life easier for them and better for their clients.

However, spending time at the beginning, like any meaningful project, will increase the success and reards immeasurably - if you’re prepared to do the hard work and be ready to evolve with the times.

The following points will provide a framework and kick start to those wishing to bite the bullet and create a process that is both positive and profitable … Read more

← Previous Page