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 Create a "Stay in Touch" Program to Attract Clients
By Harvy Simkovits, CMC
(Published June/2005 in Executive Forms of Southwestern Connecticut)

Knowledgeable salespeople know that it often takes 5-7 quality contacts (sometimes even more because of today's noisy and cluttered marketplace) to form a relationship with a prospect or referral sources. That repeated touching creates an awareness and recognition of you, which can lead to interest in your firm. However, too much of the same contact - or contact without giving value - will annoy people and they will lose their interest in you. Here is an array of methods by which you can maintain contact, offer value, and thus form a professional relationship with those whom you wish to stay in touch:
  • Create and send White Papers that address an important, timely and relevant issue, and provide an approach to tackling that issue
  • Send profiles or promotional materials (flyers, postcards, etc.) of your new or improved offerings
  • Create a regular newsletter, either in hardcopy or electronic form
  • Put everything above on your web site and drive people there through all your communiqués
  • Write-up and share client success stories
  • Obtain and share testimonials from successful projects and satisfied clients
  • Generate press releases of everything you do that are noteworthy, and copy them to everyone
  • Write articles for local and national journals; obtain reprints and send them to everyone
  • Obtain media interviews and put the best segments on tape or CD and send them to important people in your network
  • Call folks in your primary client/referral network on a regular basis to find out what's on their mind, or survey them for their views on a subject
  • Invite prospects, clients and referral sources to any presentations you perform, or invite them to a professional or business meeting you think would interest them
  • If you go to an interesting presentation that could be valuable information for people in your network, then write it up and send it along to folks. You can do similarly with any good articles or information you receive through your professional world
  • Write thank you notes to everyone who has done something for you; like given you a good idea, or a contact name, or feedback to your materials, etc.

Always ask for people's input, feedback, and other ideas when you send along information - this works to generate dialogue. Also, it's not necessary to do all the above, but to pick a set that you can leverage against each other (e.g., published articles can be both sent out to people in your network, put into an electronic newsletter, put on your web site, and mentioned in a press release). Lastly, regularity is important - people need to see that you are continually present in their world and doing great things, such that they would want to get closer to you.


Harvy Simkovits, CMC, President of Business Wisdom, works with owner managed companies to help them grow, prosper and continue on by offering innovative approaches to business development, company management, organization leadership and learning, and management education. He can be reached at 781-862-3983 or .

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