ActiveCo’s 2017 has been an exciting year of transition, especially in how we engage with our clients, vendors and prospective clients.
It’s difficult to develop a relationship with a business owner who feels you see them as “just another prospective sale”; the reason to reach out to them is usually “touching base”, “following up”, or otherwise instigated when your CRM alerts you to give them a call.
It’s easy to realize that a relationship, which we find a genuine joy to develop with a client, is exponentially more difficult to develop with a prospective client. With that in mind, we’d like to celebrate our successes (and confess to our mis-steps!) in this series of articles on sales & marketing engagement.
Engagement is critical: how you engage, who you engage, why you engage and when to engage.
Imagine a world where your clients happily choose to spend their personal time with you, despite having strictly a business relationship. Not only do they come to an event, but they are happy to meet & greet with prospective clients and speak highly of you. This “in-person reference” is exactly what we have created and experienced with a few weekend events this year.
We brought in a dozen representative from our clients and a few prospective clients.
The premise of the event was simple enough…
To Clients: “Come and enjoy a fun event with us! Eat, drink, meet our other clients and, if you don’t mind, talk us up to a few prospects.”
To Prospects: “Come and enjoy an event with us and our clients. Eat, drink and use this as a reference check.”
Everyone, male, female, young, old, had the same response: “sounds great!”.
We couldn’t get over how our clients happily took the time, on 3 separate occasions, to spend their Saturday evening with us. We can’t thank them enough, though we made sure everyone went home with a gift by the end of the night!
In part 2, we’ll get into detail on the invitations & communication process leading up to an event, and add some other event suggestions to get you started!
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