How Many Messages

Although I’ve touched on this in previous posts, I get asked it so often, it’s worth repeating … as many as it takes! First, it is your job to let your target market know you exist. If you’ve chosen the phone as one of your methods of doing that job, then you keep calling until you accomplish your task. Second, if you stop calling, what are you saying about yourself, your company? Think about this … you call and leave four messages for a potential client. They are swamped on a new project, or attending a series of meetings, or away at a conference, so they don’t get a chance to call you back and then … you stop calling. Without meaning to you tell them that what you had to tell them wasn’t very important, or that you aren’t very big on follow through, or that you didn’t really want them as a client after all. This is not how to “build” your business. I’ll share with you that prior to about 2005, I never gave up. Eventually I would reach each potential client on my list. I could hear people shake their heads on the other end of the line when they answered their phone and there I was, still wanting to talk to them. But never was there a harsh word. What I would hear most, and continue to hear is “Thank you for your persistence.” Your potential clients do want to know about you. It is up to you to make it easy for them by taking responsibility for making contact – even when that means 10 messages. Ahhh, I can hear the cynics now saying “10 messages – that makes me a stalker!”. It doesn’t – not when it is done well, keeping in mind your tone of voice, the content of your message and the fact that you have done your research and are truly calling your target market. I’ll delve into more of this next week. I want to end this post with a link to a relatively new Old Spice commercial. If you haven’t seen this yet, enjoy. It is a perfect match for what Toni Newman calls the “unexpected encounter”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE