Christmas, Clients & Business Strategy
Saturday, December 25th, 2010
Do you have a Christmas strategy? Or do you either ignore the opportunity to touch your clients or flippantly send them an email on Christmas Eve to confirm that you just don’t care?
Rule 1 of Business: Know your Clients
Any business is only as good as its client list [because that’s where the money comes from that pays to keep the lights on all year]. Knowing your clients allows for the development of strong relationships, it creates opportunity through the ability to preempt and read between the lines of their wants and needs… and it underpins your ability to retain clients in a hostile competitive landscape.
Not to mention their invaluable assistance through both formal and informal endorsement in the market.
Knowing Clients informs Touching Clients
The term touching is a marketing phrase that represents those moments in real life when you quietly touch someone on their arm or shoulder. It’s not bullying or shouting. These are the moments you get to speak quietly into their ear for no other purpose than to genuinely inform or consolidate your relationship.
Obviously, knowing clients and how they tick (their religion, marital status, political beliefs, affiliations and cultural values) informs the act of touching. You’re going to want to touch them on appropriate occasions in the appropriate ways. In other words, you don’t send a bottle of Malt Whiskey to a Mormon or a special Bible to an Atheist. And you don’t send any client that apron the guys thought might be funny at the office after party.
Maximising your Christmas Business Strategy
You have a number of options to maximise the effectiveness of your Christmas strategy but here’s some food for thought.
First, I’d see if there might be any obvious compartmentalisation in my client list – clients who spent under $5,000 may not require the same attention as the client’s who brought in more than $10,000 or over $50,000. I’d look at making at least three levels of client appreciation that I’d be interested in passing on.