Pot Of Gold
Gail Robinson gave me a nice segue for my follow-up post to Tracking Important Dates. How do I get those dates? I ask! They say yes by answering or no by not responding. No hurt feelings here. (I’m not asking for a Social or how much she weighs.) When they do answer, they’ve given me a pot of gold worth of insight into who they are, their likes and lifestyle. Things that I’d never know unless I asked.
Sugar and Everything Nice
Now that you know what to do with the information once you get it, let’s talk about how to beat it out of them – with politeness and thanks, of course. It’s all in the way you phrase it. So I say something like this:
client appreciation program - Get more Business Plans
You’ll see that the second and third pages are forms for them to fill out. I personalize this for everyone. If they don’t have kids, they don’t get that section. If I’ve already gotten some bits of info, then I remove that too. You get the idea.
I typically email these so they can fill it out by tabbing through. If it’s a client who’s not a heavy emailer, then I print and mail it with a stamped return envelope.
The Tab Skinny
Tab what? It’s a Word document. Start with setting up your Toolbar. Click View, scroll down to Toolbars, scroll down to Forms then click. You’ll see the new toolbar pop up.
To allow them to type in information, click on ab. For checkboxes – you got it! – click on the box with the checkmark. The all-important-don’t-forget last step is to click on the Lock. If you don’t lock it, it won’t work!
What’s totally awesome is showing up with something they love – whether it’s their birthday, anniversary, house warming party, whatever! I went to a signing – there’s no debate for me about going to them – with a bottle of good (read expensive) Tequila, Margarita mix and all the fixins. My clients were completely shocked – how in the world did I know they like Tequila? They told me! It was months previous, but they told me. I went to a house warming party and I knew those clients love to travel. How did I know that? I asked! I brought a coffee table book with beautiful pictures of Africa. How did I know which book to get? I’m linked to them on Facebook. 🙂
