Creative Customer Contact
One of the challenges I see salespeople struggle with are ways to stay in contact with customers from an account nurturing approach. They are very good at sending salesy emails about their products and services, they’re pretty good at calling customers to schedule sales appointment, and fairly adept at sending out sales brochures — why are they so clumsy at using those same contact methods to make a creative customer contact?
Creative Customer Contact Methods
Stop reaching out to your customers only when you need something (an appointment, a sale, a check, a referral, etc.) and start reaching out to your contacts on a “regularly random” schedule. Work your way through your contact list and make it a point to connect on a non-business basis with five contact per week (that just one per day during the business week). At the end of the year you will have made a more meaningful, personally connection with at least 260 people on your list. You want to connect with more? Increase your daily minimum.
Reasons for making these connection should also be creative.
Connect on their birthdays is easy, but not very creative.
I suggest using the National Day Calendar to find a special and fun reason to connect every single day of the year. The cool thing about the calendar is that it lists every “national Day” but it also lists the National Week and National Month categories. This kind of reference can help you plan contact messages by day, week, or month allowing you to be as efficient as possible while still being creative.
Creative Contact Resources
I’ve written on the subject of staying in touch with your customers and prospects in a creative way before. The gig website Fiverr.com is a favorite resource where you can pay a small fee (starting at five bucks) to hire people to create everything from logos to spreadsheets to celebrity impersonations. Some new favorite gigs I’ve seen on the site include a woman who will write and record a 30-second musical jingle on the ukulele, and a guy who will record a video and say anything you like in the persona of an angry biker.
Cameo As A Creative Contact Resource
While Fiverr is still an excellent resource, I’ve recently run across a fairly new website called Cameo that let’s you find celebrities will to record personal messages for a fee.
Cameo has celebrities categorized by actors, musicians, comedians, athletes, reality show personalities, and creators (social media influencers, bloggers, etc.). Each Cameo listing as a flat rate to record a personal video greeting (no endorsements) and/or participate in a live chat via the Cameo app.
- Have a client you’re trying to invite out for drinks? Why not hire Jon Taffer the host of the television show Bar Rescue to extend a personal invitation to your customer?
- Do you know a prospect is a fan of Ohio State Buckeyes football? For less than $60 you can hire Terrelle Pryor to record a video that says you and he were just talking about how it’s been a while since the three of you watched a game together — and get the prospect to call you and schedule a tailgate meetup.
- You can even find plenty of voice actors from your favorite cartoons — my favorite is obviously Kevin Conroy who voiced the caped crusader on Batman The Animated Series!)
There are SO many possibilities to choose from, that you’re sure to find a celebrity that meets your budget and will leave a last impact on your prospect or customer. Jon Lovitz from Saturday Night Live, Barry (Greg) Williams from The Brady Bunch, LeVar Burton from Star Trek The Next Generation (and Reading Rainbow!), and more Pro-Wrestlers than could ever rush the ring at a SmackDown.
Want to give Cameo a try?
Use this link to create a free account and receive a $5 discount on your first Cameo purchase. You might even send one to yourself a pep-talk reminder to be more creative when you contact your customers!
