Good Data is worth its weight in gold

Well it's all fun and games here in the Merchandise Mania workshop. In fact, I just made a comment that made Meena laugh so much that water actually came out of her nose. It's all good, clean family fun, and without that, what would be the point of coming in to work at all?

So yesterday I receive a phone call from someone offering me financial "advice". I put the word advice in quote marks because it's not really advice at all. These people are brokers and for some reason, have got my name on what I am reliably informed is known as a Sucker List. That's no joke by the way - if you get called by these brokers, you have already been labelled as a sucker.

The call opened in the usual way - the over enthusiastic hello, immediately followed by asking me how I am when it's obvious that they have no interest in the answer whatsoever. Seriously, the next time some cold calling monkey opens with "how are you", simply respond with, "Well, I'll be honest with you, if one more person tries to sell me something, I'm going to grab my rifle, drive to the nearest shopping centre and just go mental - now what can I do for you?"

Oh go on - try it - I dare you.

Back to the point. This person told me that I had spoken with a colleague of his several months ago and that he was now following up on that call. STOP RIGHT THERE, because if I did really speak with his colleague then I almost certainly would have told him that I had no interest whatsoever. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to be called in the future. I didn't want to read any literature. I was not interested.

Now you may think that I am being closed minded to these people, given how often I have spoken about the importance of keeping an open mind to opportunities. What you have to understand is that I did give one of these people a fairly large sum of money several years ago and they quite literally disappeared with it. Once bitten, twice shy, but that's a whole other story.

Once I told this caller that I was not interested, what he said next was amazing. He responded with, "Yes I can see some notes on our system so I won't start up anything with you now." Well congratulations genius, perhaps if you'd read those notes before you picked up the phone you could have saved us both some unnecessary aggravation.

What I found interesting, is that this company did take notes. They logged the details of every call so that future callers could act upon the data in question. Now any forward thinking company will employ the exact same strategy. Notes aren't just for the sales quotes and order details, they can be used to make a note of anything - a customer's birthday, their hobbies, their favourite film, whatever it is, and then armed with this knowledge, you can develop the one thing that can move you ever closer to a valuable customer - rapport.

So when was the last time you sent a potential new client a birthday card or a gift? Interesting. I bet you only reserve that privilege for your existing customers right? Think about it. Putting a smile on a potential new customer's face is the first step towards a successful working relationship.

I know I've been speaking about Christmas gifts for the past few weeks, but there's a whole year of gift giving opportunities there for you. Showing someone that you care about them as a person, rather than a commission cheque, is what good business is really all about.

It needn't be expensive, and having a small stock in your office to send out when you need to shows some very forward thinking on your part. All we have to do now is find the perfect gift. Hmmmmm - if only you knew someone in the gift business......