In business, Holiday communications are really about saying ‘thank you’ and ‘we really appreciate you’ to those who have helped you by giving you business. They are a simple but very effective way to demonstrate your corporate values, reinforcing to your clients the good feelings they have about you.
Oftentimes it is easy to forget to include on your client / vendor recipient list those within an organization who play a smaller, albeit important role. Considering how people advance in their careers both within an organization and by moving to another organization, you want to make sure you don’t exclude anyone.
Effectively managing client communications is an essential part of relationship building and maintenance. Here are some important considerations:
Develop a Communications Plan: There is likely more than one person within your organization who is communicating with clients. Each one of your people may also be communicating with several representatives associated with a single client. You can see now how complicated it can be to keep track of the myriad of people who come under the classification of “client” (or even “prospect” for that matter). You want to keep contact with all of these people because each one represents a potential opportunity, either today or at some time in the future.
Segment and profile your contacts so you can create appropriate content and a ‘send’ schedule for:
- Marketing Communications
- Holiday Communications
- Project Communications
- Events
- Corporate Announcements
- Personal Greetings
- any other communications important to your business.
Establish Contact Rules: You want all of your employees who have contact with clients and their representatives to understand
- what information they should be collecting
- how often it should checked for accuracy and updated, and
- where it is to be stored.
Decide what criteria you want to track such as Name, Company, Job Title, Project(s) they contributed to and their Project Role, Project Dates, Basic Contact Info, Social Networking sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook, Communication Content and Date Sent, Reciprocal Communications, and so forth. To manage contacts effectively, you need all of your employees to be on the same page.
Use a Professional Contact Manager: Once you understand how complicated keeping track of communications can be, and how unreliable basic email programs can be (think about the difficulty you experience when a client you worked with a few years ago calls you out of the blue referencing a specific aspect of a project for which you have to locate the particular email – good luck!), you will want to use a professional Contact Manager.
Whether you need a custom Extranet, which offers you the most flexibility and control, or a store-bought “off-the-shelf” product, it is an investment well-worth making.
Business development is an on-going endeavor that is based to a large extent on relationship building. From your initial contact with a person, you have the opportunity to establish and maintain a relationship that could last for years and result in continued business with your company. The important thing is to develop your communications plan, establish your rules, and implement a way to ensure everyone sticks to it.
So make your list, check it twice, and send a Holiday Greeting to everyone with whom you and your employees have had a business relationship you’re looking to maintain.
