Scheduling Tactics For New Contacts
Your business thrives on making contacts and getting new business. But what happens after you've made a new contact? How often should you be in touch with that person? What are some rules of thumb for keeping in touch and nurturing your relationship? Here are several tips for keeping in touch and strengthening your business relationships:
1. Spread out your contacts.
Regardless of the level of your relationship with an individual, the more contact you can make with a source, the better. Two short meetings are more beneficial than one long session. Each meeting becomes an opportunity to strengthen the relationship and to enhance your visibility and recognition.
2. Schedule predictably.
Stay in touch with business associates regularly and consistently. Train them to expect to hear from you at certain times. For example, if you usually contact one of your sources during the first week of every quarter, he or she will come to expect it and will budget time for you. If he or she doesn't hear from you, they may call to see how you are doing on their own.
3. Link new contact activities with established ones.
Getting into new routines is not easy, but one of the fastest and surest ways to establish good habits is to link them with old habits. For instance, if you never seem to get around to drafting letters that need to be written to your sources, but you always manage to browse the Web before lunch, resolve to draft a letter while you're waiting for all those Web page graphics to download.
4. Make each contact lead to the next.
Before concluding a meeting or telephone conversation, schedule the date of your next contact. In written correspondence, close by stating the date your target should expect to hear from you again: "I'll send you a note by the end of the month." Having made the commitment, you're more likely to follow through. This practice establishes a chain of contacts, with each meeting leading to the next.
5. Assume responsibility for making contact.
You can't control whether a source will contact you when you need help; you can control only what you do yourself. Take the initiative; stay in touch with your source.
6. Stick to your plan.
As you achieve success in establishing routines with your sources, some of them may begin taking the contact initiative. Don't let these contacts interfere with your contact schedule -- that is, don't count contacts when they initiate as fulfillment of the contacts you've scheduled.
Dr. Ivan Misner is the author of The World's Best Known Marketing Secret (Bard Press), and co-author of Business by Referral (Bard Press). He is also Founder & CEO of BNI (Business Network Int'l.) the world's largest referral organization with over 1,600 chapters in almost a dozen countries around the world. He is a professor of Business Management at the University of La Verne where he resides with his wife and three children.
