Jackie Harder
Is your business high tech or high touch?
Both have their place, but relying completely on the former is inviting doom.
The best application of technology is transparent to the public, and is put in place to give employees more opportunity to enhance the oh-so-important personal element – high touch – with their customers.
Some of those invisible high-tech solutions may be as simple as networking office computers and printers, software that tracks sales and inventory, and voice mail.
But don’t go nuts on the technology side. The last thing you want is hardware replacing people in areas where you want and need that human touch.
It’s a huge turn off to call a local business – which has a dozen employees, max – during regular business hours and hear, “Thank you for calling the ABC Co. Our hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. We are located at 123 Elm Drive. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now. If you know your party’s last name, please enter the first three letters of that person’s last name. If you have no idea who you’re calling or why, please…”
OK, so maybe I’m exaggerating on that last one…but just a little!
Phone answering systems should be used only outside of regular business hours.
Why? Because people want to talk to people, not to machines.
I’ll never forget the call I picked up, only to hear the caller yell at someone in the background, “Hey! I got a real live person!”
It’s a sad state of (business) affairs when getting a “real live person” on the phone is the exception than the rule.
Part of every business owner or manager’s high-touch regime should be face-to-face, “real live people” networking.
Why? Because people do business with people they know, not with machines.
And that’s where small businesses have a huge advantage over conglomerates. Take advantage of it.
Networking – also called referral, word-of-mouth, viral and relationship marketing – is vital to success.
How you go about it depends on your business, and the kinds of people you want to reach.
Let’s look at the company that provides wholesale screen-printed T-shirts and canvas bags as well as high-end embroidered shirts and caps.
One set of customers is retailers that want to provide inexpensive, colorful T-shirts for resale. Where would you, Mr. Screen Printer, find those kinds of people?
Another group of potential customers could be found in the professions – lawyers, for instance – who want quality golf shirts with their company name discreetly embroidered over the left breast that firm members can wear in informal gatherings.
How can you connect with people in that group?
What about non-profit organizations? Event organizers? Who else needs to know about your product? How do you reach them?
Once you’ve got your list of networking groups, how do you take advantage of that social capital?
• Be consistent. You can’t show up one time and expect to drive droves of business through your front door. (This is also true with other forms of marketing.)
• Have plenty of business cards available to hand out.
• Prepare and practice your elevator speech. Elevator speeches are so called because you should be able to say who you are and what you do in the time it takes to ride an elevator to your destination.
• Collect business cards. Write on the back where and when you met the person. Then follow up with a note. E-mail is better than nothing, but a quick, hand-written note shows that you care.
Is all that humanity giving you the willies? OK, go high tech. There are plenty of online business-networking sites as well – about 25 million of them.
High touch is looking better all the time.
