For the longest time, I loved receiving handy gifts that made my office table look great. My favorite was this business card holder, that came as a unique rectangle box and kept many of my collected contacts safe.
The only problem was I never picked one out to reach out to them.
Thing is, when we collect an email or number or a business card, we don’t realize how scattered our process of manual storage is. Some numbers remain saved on our phones, some emails jotted down on our Notes or added to our Gmail contacts, and the cards we neatly stack in the holders never step out of the boxes again.
This happens because in a time when everything is getting done in seconds, the urge or prompt to complete a manual task easily go unnoticed.
And that is a huge, HUGE, mistake we make.
Our contacts are our future customers.
Because our contacts are our most important assets. Everything we do, every promotional activity, every networking session, every marketing event – is to get contacts of our prospective clients and get in touch with them right after. Our contacts are very precious.
We not only need to save them but constantly seek them out and nurture them. We need to remember that we need them more than they need us. To do that, we need the right tool, so that all our contacts are in one place, and we always remember which stage they are in, and how to target them for a particular product or service.
Hubspot: Your free CRM software
Your Biggest Asset in Building a Customer Base.
Your contacts are the most significant aspect of your business. Make it your prior activity to keep a regular check on your contacts. I repeat – do not waste any time in thinking how to manage it manually. Get a Contact Management System and see how well it works for you, and how much time and effort you can save. My
With this, you can sync it to anything like your email or phone contacts or any other servers.
Look how neatly you can arrange your contacts and their emails on the platform.
The reason I like Hubspot’s free CRM software, in particular, is because you can see in which stage which of your lead is at any given moment. While leads are a topic of another day, let me draw your attention to just how useful this data is.
Knowing the stage your lead is in will help you decide what to do with them, and your next steps are already made a lot simpler and easier.
I use this every single day, and still get amazed by its features. If you are using Google Chrome, you can get an extension. It will work smoothly with your email server.
You can store templates here, sales templates, invoice details, attach relevant documents, anything. While this might not sound new for a tool, what makes Hubspot’s CMS so great is that you know at what point of communication you last left your customer at, and who you need to follow up with and by what time before they lose interest.
For example, there is a template called “The Breakup” in this free CRM software. If anyone does not reply to me after my third attempt to contact them, I send them an email saying,
1. “Okay, since you are not replying to me, I will take it that you are not interested and stop bothering you.” Jokes aside, this is actually important, because you don’t want them to add you to their spam, and scare off future prospects from that.
2. “Maybe you are interested but you need some more time to decide…” This gives them to continue being annoyed by me or clearly say no to me right then. Again, it saves time and I usually get a decided response.
3. “You had a terrible accident on your way to work and fell into a ditch. I need to send somebody to check on you right now! Which one is it?” Believe it or not, the third message always works. The customer enjoys your joke and replies in good humor and thus you build a great relationship again.
There you go. The templates are great.
Another thing I like about this tool is the panel on the right, where you can add all the data about your clients, especially if you have B2B or B2C clients from abroad. By doing so, the next time you want to send a contact an email, you can just type the address, and every date you stored about that contact will come up – their business address, their deal size – everything.
So what do we have so far? Your customer is the center of your world and your contacts are your biggest assets, so make sure you are always, always and always in touch with them.
Conclusion
While we are on the topic, I would like to give you another reminder on continuing to execute the four stages of bringing customers: Attract, Engage, Decision and Delight. I will get into the details of this in a later post, but for now, remember it works like this. You attract them with a product or service, you engage with them by communicating an offer through marketing tools, you let them decide, and once they are willing to give your product a shot – you make sure you delight them.
That’s how a recurring customer base grows with your contact list.
If you need any further help on digital marketing, or just want to reach out to me with some good news, feel free to get in touch with me at any time.
