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Follow-Up Strategies
- By Doug Perry
- Published 09/2/2008
- Home Based Business
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Doug Perry
Doug Perry, former Marketing Director of http://HDTrader.com. The number one niche classified site for Harley-Davidson motorcycle sellers, buyers, and dealers joined the gibLink team in January. Doug was the sole force to take a non-revenue generating project site to over a million dollars a year in under four years. Doug was also involved in the startup website http://BikerorNot.com, a social network for bikers. Now hosting over 40,000 profiles in its network and hosting a top traffic ranking.
View all articles by Doug Perry
by Janet Attard
As you know, part of the value of meetings and conferences is the chance to make contacts with vendors, potential customers and other people who can help you grow your business. In fact, for some meetings and events, the networking is the primary takeaway.
Chances are, when you get home from events, you take a few minutes to go through the list of contacts you made and send a follow-up email. Or maybe you’ll make a couple of phone calls to the people on the list who seemed like the most likely sales or business development prospects. But your email goes unanswered. Or the contact you want to reach isn’t available -- and doesn’t return your call -- because they’re really busy at the moment, and, well, they’re not quite sure whether you are the guy with the mustache that they didn’t like, or they guy with the gray hair they thought was pretty knowledgeable.
So you forget about those contacts, and they forget about you.
That kind of thing happens a lot, but it doesn’t have to be par for the course.
You can make your follow-ups stand out from everyone else's - and better position yourself to get your future calls answered with this simple strategy: Send your new contacts a short handwritten note through the postal service reminding them where you met and what you had discussed, or why they’ll benefit by speaking further with you. Ask them to give a call if you can be of help. Be sure the note includes some visual representation that will help the prospect better remember who you are. It could be a business card, or you might want to consider custom follow-up cards that let you include a photo of yourself, your business, or products.
As you know, part of the value of meetings and conferences is the chance to make contacts with vendors, potential customers and other people who can help you grow your business. In fact, for some meetings and events, the networking is the primary takeaway.
Chances are, when you get home from events, you take a few minutes to go through the list of contacts you made and send a follow-up email. Or maybe you’ll make a couple of phone calls to the people on the list who seemed like the most likely sales or business development prospects. But your email goes unanswered. Or the contact you want to reach isn’t available -- and doesn’t return your call -- because they’re really busy at the moment, and, well, they’re not quite sure whether you are the guy with the mustache that they didn’t like, or they guy with the gray hair they thought was pretty knowledgeable.
So you forget about those contacts, and they forget about you.
That kind of thing happens a lot, but it doesn’t have to be par for the course.
You can make your follow-ups stand out from everyone else's - and better position yourself to get your future calls answered with this simple strategy: Send your new contacts a short handwritten note through the postal service reminding them where you met and what you had discussed, or why they’ll benefit by speaking further with you. Ask them to give a call if you can be of help. Be sure the note includes some visual representation that will help the prospect better remember who you are. It could be a business card, or you might want to consider custom follow-up cards that let you include a photo of yourself, your business, or products.