Turning Contacts into Relationships with Michelle Bergquist It's the dawn of a new year and a new opportunity to make things happen. It's time to evaluate the last year and set a plan for being more effective, profitable and successful. When it comes to business and key relationships, it's never been more important to stay connected and in-touch with those that are important to you and your success in business.
Think back over the last year and ask yourself how committed you've been to staying connected with your best business relationships. Have you kept in touch beyond the once-a-year greeting card and barrage of email marketing messages? How often did you connect face-to-face or phone-to-phone with your most important relationships and contacts? How many contacts have fallen through the cracks due to neglect and lack of organization to keep connected?
Make a personal commitment for 2009 to keep connected more strategically. The more you have a plan to manage your business relationships, the better your results will be in generating new business, connections, repeat sales and referrals. I've outlined a few suggestions to build better relationships that can turn into solid gold opportunities for the new year.
1) Prioritize your contacts and give a rating as to their importance to your success. Rate contacts as "A's, B's, C's or Good, Better and Best." You can't be effective in generating referrals and developing repeat business and opportunities if you try to keep connected to everyone in your database and contact list. Best clients get your time, attention and resources. Put your time into those that have the highest potential to you and your future success. For the rest, keep connected via email marketing and automatic communication.
2) Mix up your communication with your relationships. If you always send out email marketing (as so many of us do now), try making an old fashioned phone call to your best relationships. Better yet, ask to meet with them if you haven't had precious face time with your best clients and referral partners.3) Track your communication and conversation. Do you know the last time you met with your contacts and what entailed or what was said? Log information that comes from conversations with key relationships. Make an effort to collect personal and business intelligence that helps you strengthen the bond between you and your best business relationships.
Minor changes can provide significant business results if you commit to making small changes in how you connect with your best business relationships. Start with a few commitments and begin to reap the rewards. Here's to 2009! May it bring you solid gold opportunities!
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Michelle Bergquist believes that when it comes to business and success, it's all about relationships! As business consultant, author, national speaker and corporate trainer to companies and associations throughout the United States, Bergquist entertains and educates small groups, conference attendees and large corporate audiences. Michelle's book, "How to Build a Million Dollar Database" is quickly becoming the authority on how to build a powerful database full of priceless connections and productive business relationships. Michelle's book is available online at www.michellebergquist.com or www.amazon.com. If you're looking for a keynote speaker, workshop leader or emcee for your next meeting, conference or event, call 800-438-6132 or visit www.michellebergquist.com.
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