Growing your business is about growing relationships and while systems can assist you on every step of your journey, they cannot form a bond with your prospective clients. In other words systems are just tools. People don’t build relationships with tools (at least not typically) people build relationships with people.
Notice Mr. Maxwell said “YOU” not your “system”. This advice may not apply if you are a personal services provider, however, if you are providing services online, (virtual services) it can become all too easy to rely too heavily on your systems. This can be doubly true with really small business owners and triply so with part-time business owners.
Fortunately, it is easy to avoid this hazard. All it takes is planning for your follow ups. Each business has its own plan and a small business trying to communicate effectively with large numbers of individuals needs to put a plan in place. Otherwise, Things can fall through the cracks and those “things” can be people.
You’ve heard the phrase: “Don’t sweat the small stuff?” The optimum word is “small”. If the small stuff is not “sweated” at some point, a small business could end up being a small used-to-be business. It’s the small stuff that can bring a business to its knees.
Keep in mind it can take up to 12 attempts to get an individual to follow the action that you want then to take. We call those attempts “touches”. A touch can be any action or interaction available to you as it relates to the contact and it can be virtual or actual.
We can’t depict exactly what actions will occur in every situation, but here’s an example of 12 possible actions or “touches”:
- Thank you
- Invite to online/offline event (Could be several touches via FB, IG, LI, YT, etc.)
- Check-in Call
- Check in Coffee (if local)
- Invite to Social media
- Newsletters
- Update
- Invite to Complimentary Call
- Invite to Webinar
- Invite to Survey
- Invite to Video
- Ask for Referrals
Were you able to see all of the openings for opportunities to interact on a personal level?
In closing let me say ... WE LOVE SYSTEMS!! It's having a balance that could make a big difference, so If you are looking for ways to design a follow-up strategy that allows for more “human touches”, please reach out to us.
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