Often we feel like we have to be the expert to become successful and add value to clients. What if I told you that you could make a lot of money listening? The best do it everyday.
Listening for Value
If you want to be successful in marketing or sales you should be committed to a lifelong pursuit of learning. Learning for your own benefit and for the benefit of your prospects and clients. That’s right you should be learning for your customers too.
We live in an age defined by too much information. And, although your industry may be important to your customers (i.e., personal finance, mortgage, real estate, professional education, home improvement, debt management) they don’t have time to figure it out. That is why they need a professional.
Perhaps, they don’t even know they need to be paying attention. This is where you listening plays a big role in making more money.
Passing on Valuable Information
You telling a customer to pay attention to [add your industry here] is one thing, and often shrills of self-serving. In contrast, a short simple clip from the Web, a though provoking website link, a forwarded industry email summarizing where you want a customer to focus often inspires action.
The two key point you don’t want to miss in passing on valuable information, even when it is from someone else: add a call to action and ask for the deal.
So often I see people forward an email or website article and maybe they editorialize, but they fail to try to make a sale. It can be as simple as:
This economy is scary. Can you believe mortgage rates have dropped again? If you have any questions about this article from Forbes.com give me a call at 734.782.1177. Take a look at your mortgage statement and see if this affects you–It has a lot of my clients.
Four quick sentences that drive them to read the article, call you with questions, and just in case they miss the hint you tell them to double check their own self-interests. Remember this is ad copy!
Set Up Your Listening Posts
If you are going to listen for your customers you had better have some great listening posts that get you information faster than your clients. I suggest three general categories:
Authoritative:
wsj.com
forbes.com
nytimes.com
google.com/news
Ordinary People and Opinions:
google.com/alerts
blogsearch.google.com
bloglines.com
technorati.com
Buzz Machine:
Twitter.com
A Couple of Tricks
Just for a little added effect and sense of urgency here are a couple of tricks I like to use:
- Send it directly from the news site. Cut ‘n paste several emails into the send. This BCC’s each client and it seems personal and urgent. It gives the impression you were doing your morning read and this struck you as important and you personal though of them.
- Send it directly from your Google Alerts email. Again, personal and urgent.
- Cut an article out of a newspaper or trade journal. Scan it. BCC it to several clients. Maybe not as urgent, but again personal and seems like extra effort for their interests.
In all cases, take smal segments of your database (5 to 10) and reserve it as a sporadic gesture (1 to 2 times per month). Otherwise, it is like your friend’s bad joke list–you feel like someone is forwarding their spam folder.
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