Communications

How do we use communication tools to communicate or stay in touch with our clients?

In this morning’s networking breakfast the theme was how we are using phone, skype face to face and more to open and maintain communications with clients.  A great subject, so I wanted to share my thoughts and get your feedback as well.

First up this varies depending on what business you’re in, location and your business model.

Over the counter and one-on-one appointments are still the foundation of many businesses, and catching up with clients and prospective clients (and peers as well) at networking events is a great way of expanding your reach in the local business area and finding reliable local suppliers.

Apart from face to face meetings and networking events I receive most of my communications through:

• email
• SMS
• Facebook posts
• Facebook messaging
• LinkedIn inMail
• phone

Plus there’s

• online chat
• voice mail messaging through such tools as SpeakPipe
• Skype
• Viber, a growing alternative to Skype
• Your Facebook business profile page
• Your LinkedIn company page
• LinkedIn Groups
• Facebook Groups

And lets not forget Google +, reply and the comments area to our Blogs and the comments or communications section on your YouTube channel if you have one.

So there’s 19 different ways we can initiate or communicate with our clients and prospective clients.

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"If you’re only allowing one or two ways for customer’s to contact your business you’re definitely missing out on some business opportunities." Geoff Moller

Here’s six tips for better communication with clients and prospective clients:

1. Decide on your communications strategy as part of your marketing plan.
2. Be prepared to received inquires from all sorts of sources, it’s the new way of receiving leads (unless you decide you don’t want to of course).
3. DON”T Spam people just because you can, it’s not cool.
4. Use a CRM to keep track of your micro-conversations with people and in time your CRM will become a vaulable asset of your business.
5. Watch that out for new ways that could help deliver leads to your business, this is particularly true for the tech-savvy next generation managers.
6. Follow up on EVERY inquiry, I’ll admit I’ve learnt the hard way and missed out on new business.

Thank you for listening.

I’d love your feedback or opinion on today’s topic, if you have have a different opinion please share, I’d love to hear from you.

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