The Golden Touch

With every customer, client, donor, and prospect comes the question we all have to answer - How much contact is appropriate? Too little may say we do not care enough and too much may make them feel you are being far too persistent. It is a delicate balance.

There are many ways to make contact with your clients, prospects, customers or donors. First, the old fashioned face to face method. Visit them, dine with them, attend an event with them. Socializing is the best avenue to bonding with them and ensuring they understand their importance to you and your company. However, our Post Pandemic world makes it harder to shake that hand, give that hug, or high five. In fact, many people now shy away from any formal close contact for fear of germ transfer. Box music

So, what has replaced the face to face contact? Most assuredly, the electronic means of communicating. An email, a video chat, a social media live video, social media messaging, FaceTime, they all allow for a digital imprint. They now seamlessly take the place of sitting across the table from one another. It is effective and it is safe as you do not need to worry about if your party has been vaccinated or not.

We still have phone calls and conference calls which are not video based. And, of course, mail. We can send product or service recommendations through paper advertising or postcards. We can ask for donations via mail. We can apprise our customers, clients, prospects, will and donors of new options, new products, new services. And we can send our thanks, congratulations, condolences via cards through the mail. The handwritten gesture still makes a statement in today’s digital world.

With so many options to contact others, it is important to do as much research on your prospects as possible and to have picked up on queues from your existing clients and customers on how often they want to hear from you. Donors may expect a higher level of touch and a more expensive or personalized experience. Lunches, dinners, golf games, sporting and music venues in a box, all acceptable and sometimes expected forms of gratitude with higher end clients or donors.

The dog world uses the Touch Command to gain the focus and attention of a dog, particularly when recall is important. This is not all that different from people trying to gain attention of other people where a sale, a reward, a treat is the ultimate outcome. Again, our worlds collide!

Be well.