I know. I know.

I have told you about this before.

But you are still not doing it, are you?

One of our executive coaches for the Profit Club was a client for years.  Michael heard me telling him to do this exact thing many times.  He resisted it.  Like you are.

So, all the Profit Club members get unlimited email access to us so they get the support that they need to be successful. A new Profit Club member had a slow start to the month and she asked what to do.

Michael emailed back and gave her advice that she had often heard from me: that the quickest way to get more business was to create better relationships with your raving fans and to reach out and call them.

He forwarded me their email exchange. I had to share it because I know that it is what many of you are thinking.

“Michael, I will be honest. I really dislike calling people over the phone and I understand that this is really important, but I hate it and I do not know if I will be able to motivate my team to do it since I have not really positive feelings about it. I actually hate when people call me when I am busy at the store (like a rep) or when I was at home with my kids…so I always think the person on the other end of the phone will be irritated by us calling them. I really apologize, I really do not mean to be rude about this..but it is a mental barrier for me…and I know Cathy will tell me to do this..”

Michael’s response:
“I will be totally honest right back. I fought Cathy hard on calling people for a very long time. She kept after me to do it. She kept telling me that these were my people. They had given me permission to contact them and that they wanted to hear from me. I had a team member who kept telling me that she didn’t think people wanted to hear from us on the phone either.

I listened to her for way too long. It got to the point where I just made it a non-negotiable standard that everyone needed to make so many calls a day, because not doing it was just not working anymore. Then I knew that I needed to do it too, so I was providing a good example to my team.

You know what happened? Most people were really very pleasant and happy to hear from me. They were glad that I was calling to see how they were doing and to let them know about our event.

You know what didn’t happen? Any customers yelling at me or getting upset with me for calling. Not one.

So. I am challenging you and each of your staff to call 10 people everyday for the rest of the week. So each day, you are each calling 10 people. You can start out with people you have a different reason to call, if that feels easier. Like look through your rewards cards and find the people who only need to fill in one more box on their card to get their reward. Give them a call about that and then tell them about what is going on in your store this weekend.

This is also a good opportunity to get these people’s info into your POS system, if it isn’t there already. You will also want to keep a list of who you are calling (or better yet, keep track in POS, you can do it within the customer profile), so no one overlaps. Another good reason to call people is to see how they are doing with a recent purchase. You can do this, I promise :).”

Michael is right. You can do this. She learned how powerful this tip was for her store. Don’t let anyone make any more excuses – especially you. Pick up the phone and love on your customers.