Growing up, I remember going into the office with my dad just about every Saturday morning. My grandfather started a kitchen and bath company back in the 60s, and it was a family business with my dad as Vice President of Sales. The office smelled like burnt coffee, printer ink and cigarette smoke. I’d tag along with my dad and draw pictures for the secretaries while he read through his messages and checked on construction schedules. File cabinets lined the back wall of each office, and the sounds of those metal drawers slamming, printers chugging along and faxes coming in created a background drone that I will forever associate with “business.”
After I graduated college and started my first real job, I remember asking my dad how he stayed in touch with all those suburban developers, construction crews, potential clients. “Whatd’you mean, hun?” he asked.
“How do you remember who to stay in touch with? And how often? What their upcoming projects are and when they start?” I asked, feeling overwhelmed by the volume of clients I was learning to manage.
The thing is, he just knew. He’d been working with the same clients for 20 years. The relationships he had with those guys were developed on the golf course and over dinners spanning dozens of projects. Plus, his secretary handled all the files. I think her name was Shirley. She’d talked to clients’ secretaries, and they set up lunches when it made sense. All those metal filing cabinets were filled with the details of every client and project since the company began, and those secretaries’ existence depended on knowing what was happening and when.
When I told him about the first Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM) I was working with, you can imagine his reaction. “Hmm, I guess that’s a good idea”.
I think the idea of a program telling you who to call just didn’t jive with a guy who knew his clients’ kids personally. Plus, collecting everyone’s sales numbers and projections to report at the end of each month was part of his job. How weird for it to be done automatically? I think it seemed a bit like a robot replacing his secretary. I can’t really argue with that. Over the years, I’ve used a few: ACT, Recruitmax, ZOHO. They are what you make of them. For me, it’s a nice reminder to have a conversation with someone. I follow clients on LinkedIn and Twitter to hear how they’re doing.
But oh! business before computers and smart phones and the internet, when secretaries greeted you with coffee and your schedule for the day. Have we lost something? How do you manage your clients? How do you keep in touch without sounding like a robot?
i think we can learn a lot from the way things were done in the “olden” days. When I talk to clients about social media, I often refer to my father-in-law. He was a steel salesman for years, traveling throughout Pennsylvania, OH, WV, and other states. Once or twice a year he would visit businesses, take the buyer out to play golf, and with some of them, it might be years before they would buy. But he didn’t go into their offices and say, “I have steel for sale, wanna buy some?”. He went in, looked around the office, and took notice of their lives. “Hey, how’s your son doing with soccer?”, “Did you see that Steeler’s game the other day?”, “Is your grandmother still sick?”.
He understood the power of the relationship and engagement, the exact things we talk about with social media. That’s what Shirley was doing for your dad.
No matter what tools we use, or what automation systems or software we adopt, we need to humanize them and inject our personality.
@KenMueller Yep, that’s exactly right. Sometimes it’s hard to explain why social media matters. Or we explain it a hundred different ways through examples and statistics, but at the end of the day, we’re all people hoping to developing working relationships and trust with other people.
@ErikaGennari1 @KenMueller Totally agree with you (and Marijean). My husband spends a lot of time working with his employees on how important creating true relationships with their clients are. It doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but the ones who are good at it usually become the most successful.
Ironically I talked to my dad on Sunday just as he was heading out to have dinner with his “Shirley”. He’s been retired for several years but they still have a relationship, as he does with several of his long time clients. They might not have talked about it in terms of “engagement” but it’s exactly what they were doing all those years.
Thanks for the reminder!
Totally agree with you @ErikaGennari1 and @KenMueller . My husband spends a lot of time working with his employees on how important creating true relationships with their clients are. Some don’t get it, but the ones who do usually become the most successful.
Ironically I talked to my dad on Sunday just as he was heading out to have dinner with his “Shirley”. He’s been retired for several years but they still have a relationship, as he does with several of his long time clients from his many years in banking. They might not have talked about what they were doing using terms like “engagement” but it’s exactly what they were doing all those years.
Thanks for the reminder to make sure we don’t forget the human factor, and for bringing back memories from spending days at my dad’s office growing up (Dell always had candy!).
@amyeastlack @KenMueller Isn’t it funny the details you remember? I couldn’t get over the assortment of highlighters and permanent markers. That smell is magical.