How Do I Stay In Front of My Clients Without Pestering Them?

This is from a Question & Answer call our team recently did in our program called The Accidental Salesperson. We thought we’d give you a peak inside our thinking when we answer client questions.  (This is a transcription of spoken audio so forgive some of the clunkiness).

Q: What I know is that clients give me referrals and therefore I need to be in front of my clients, but I don’t make time to do it. How do I do so?

A: Well there are two things here. One is the making time and two is what I do with that time that I make.

I’m going to give you a couple of ideas.

If you really believe that you have something of enormous value for your clients and let’s say it’s July and tax season is over and as a CPA, you’re kind of back in the swing of things because you’ve taken the month of May off to just recharge. I think it’s OK to call people up and say,

“Look, we don’t really have any kind of imminent issue here but I was wondering if you would mind if I stop by sometime. I’ve got something I would like to show you.”

I think you should make a call where you’re actually going to be giving value.

You’re not giving a sales pitch. There’s no value in that. You’re stopping by. You’re either writing an article and this is where it gets to number two. You’re either writing content of some kind:

• An article
• A white paper
• A case study
• Or something where I, as the client, am interested in knowing it.

It could be how somebody does something. It could be new ways to save money on taxes. It could be updates from the IRS on things that I should be concerned about as a business owner or as a taxpayer.

You Must Think About An Expert Strategy

This gets back to being an expert and positioning yourself as an expert. In your profession, there are tons of things that you can do so you have a reason to go meet with them. The issue in a lot of this stuff is, “Do you have a good, compelling reason?” Stopping by to say, “Hey!” is probably not a good, compelling reason and that’s why we don’t do it. It’s also why we can’t make a phone call to bring ourselves to do it.

So the question is: “How are you going to bring value when you show up?”

That’s why I suggest some kind of an article, a white paper, a document. It could be something as simple as a website article that you print off and then you interpret in some way or you add your perspective to it. Don’t just send them a link to an “interesting article” you saw. That’s the coward’s way out. Add to it. Enhance it. Offer your perspective on it. That will differentiate you.

You have to create a behavioral plan to do these behaviors.

I like it if you say, “Four times this month, I’m going to meet with clients and it could be a lunch. It could be a dinner. It could be just a drop-by,” but set a goal for how many times a year you feel like you need to be in front of each client.

Then put it into a behavioral plan. So when you start your week off on Monday morning or Sunday night, you look at the things that need to be done and every week.

Non-salespeople and salespeople alike have that issue.

Email is one way to stay in front of them but if you’re in a business that has high lifetime value – and I know that so many of the people on these calls and in our program, The Accidental Salesperson Program, have high lifetime value customers, meaning your customers provide a great deal of value over the life of that customer.

They buy big projects. They buy a lot. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sacrificing the email and actually going out and visiting people. I still think a lot of business gets done face-to-face and relationships definitely get built face-to-face.

Then if you’re looking for referrals, it becomes a lot easier to ask someone for a referral if you’ve just delivered value to them.

Asking for Referrals

So the way this works is you call somebody up.

“Hi Bill. This is John Smith. Hey, Bill, I was going to be over in your neck of the woods on next Tuesday afternoon. I have an article that I recently published. I would like to stop by, give it to you, explain it to you and maybe there are some tips and some advice in there for you. No charge call. It’s just me being of service to you.”

I say, “Sure, fine. Come on over.” He comes over. We go over the article. We spend 20 minutes on it and it’s not just the article we go over. We go over the point of view that he has when he wrote the article and then he says,

“By the way, I’m looking to grow my practice over the next year or so and I know that most of my new clients come from my existing clients. So at some point, would you be open to introducing me to a handful of your customers or handful of your friends or handful of whatever?”

I say, “Well sure. I would be glad to do that.”

Then we start talking about who that might be. So when you’re delivering value – not when you’re in the middle of the sales process – but outside the sales process. When you’re just serving me as a client, I’m a lot more likely to give you referrals than if you just call asking me for referrals.