Thanks for dropping by!
Over the coming months, I’m going to share with you as much good business advice as I can from a multitude of sources, but I’m also going to be brutally honest about the trials and tribulations of running my own business. I’ve had a quick check, and I think I’ve got the qualifications: I’m a writer and I run my own small business.
Whether or not you agree with what I say, your comments are always welcome; and I hope to feature the best of them in upcoming blogs. Do let me (and the wider readership) know your tips and tricks, the challenges you face, and the wider issues affecting your company. Over the past decade, I have probably interviewed several hundred businesspeople, and whether times are good or bad, I am eternally amazed at the indefatigable self-belief of the entrepreneur. If this blog can be a wellspring of those good vibes, then there will be ample wealth to go round.
Now then, I have no right to expect you to pass on your tips without setting some sort of good example, so let’s begin right away. Naturally, as a small business owner, I was back at my desk in early January. I was refreshed, but all that could be found in my bank account was a mouldering tangerine and the faint smell of mince pies. Of course, the phone didn’t ring, as everyone with a “proper job” (as your parents will have called it) only came back to work when they fancied it. Like every entrepreneur, my mind was filled with the sinking feeling that some sales might be A Good Idea.
So here’s a sneaky tip for renewing contact with those existing clients with whom you haven’t spoken for ages- I call it the “custom newsletter”. You could write an email overtly asking for some business, but that’s a touch cheeky given that you haven’t bothered to get in touch for some months. A newsletter would be fine, but too generic.
The sneaky tip is to draft emails which look like newsletters but are actually crafted specifically for the client in question: effectively a newsletter with a distribution of… one person. This has yielded some success for me in the past. You get all the cuddly soft-sell of a newsletter, with the precision of a personal email.
This can of course be achieved directly from Outlook. If you can cobble together a template, you might like to send something more graphically appealing. There are several online newsletter services which will manage both the sending and statistical analysis for you (I am a big fan of Campaign Monitor at http://www.campaignmonitor.com). For what it’s worth my friends in marketing tell me that Tuesday afternoons are particularly good for email newsletter readership. I have no idea why this should be the case, but it’s a useful fact to know! I wish you every success with your sales efforts.
Filed under: sales, tips | Tagged: newsletter, sales, tips
