Customer Contact Concepts

The Rule of 7 – Customer Contact Concepts

The following article is based on reading Jim Domanski’s “The Rule of 7″ and offers food for thought.

The Rule is valid because most of us have learned that the average canvasser is not interested in a relationship but rather in a quick and easy (“sleazy”?) transaction. Most of us seek a longer-term relationship with our service or product providers, but few of those seeking our business anew seem willing to invest the time it takes to establish a relationship, and so we tend to stick with our vendors-of-habit not necessarily because they are particularly good or effective but rather because it is “better the devil you know.”

The Rule of 7 seeks familiarity (“mindshare”) with the buyer for the seller, their company and their products. “Mindshare” is the portion of the person’s “buying awareness” allocated to you and, after a couple of contacts you might achieve 1% of this, but at this level your prospect barely knows you and the odds of a sale are tiny.

But, if you were to increase your mindshare to 60% your odds of success increase proportionally. Familiarity breeds trust and trust breeds sales.

So here are Four Steps to Gaining Mindshare:

1. Define who is worthy of Contact. Your criteria might be prospects with size, prestige, influence or, if you are just establishing a market, it could be “everyone.” The main point here is to think this through before acting.
2. Create a Positive Contact System. This might include resources that positively impress your Customer (brochures, uniforms, website, signage, service level at first contact, newsletters, information, education, advice), and a schedule or system for passing those to a prospective Customer in a planned manner. For example, a small handwritten “Thank you” card sent after a sales call, is an old fashioned yet still very powerful way to create a positive impression and set yourself apart from the crowd competing for attention.
3. Vary the Contact. Use e-mail, fax, direct mail, courier service, the telephone and, if appropriate, a visit. Mix them up and orchestrate them (that means “planning” again!) Sending seven e-mails or leaving seven voice mails won’t build a relationship. In fact, they look a lot like stalking! Varying the medium creates the need for your prospect to interact with you at different levels.
4. Schedule the Contact. Accept the reality that it may take 4-6 months to have a prospective Customer accept that you are interested in a “real relationship”, at which point you still may not sell something, but at least you have become a “serious contender”. What gets scheduled tends to get done so develop a “contact calendar” for every new prospect (this is why step 1. is in here, by the way), and stick to it, while taking care to avoid “overwhelming” or “inundating” your contact. A good rule of thumb is to never let more than two weeks go by without a contact.