In sales networking, contact vitality depends on finding ways to stay in touch. For the first 25 years of my career, I would spend each Sunday night doing what I call Spin-to-Win. I’d flip through my Rolodex. I’d study all the little handwritten scribbles:
How is the daughter of Client X doing in her first year away at college?
- How did the disk surgery fate for the wife of Client Y?
- Say, that Homecoming win must have brightened the day of Client Z, proud alumnus of Pandemonium State!
Never force this information to top billing in a phone call. Let it surface casually after you’ve broached a business issue. Sound contrived? If you’re in sales, you better really love people. Your human concern should naturally bubble up. Whose memory doesn’t need a bump or a nudge? This process just gives your tracking system reliability.
When I sold Swim with Sharks to my publisher and launched my writing career, you know what was the cornerstone of my pitch? Fifty-two pounds of Rolodexes I schlepped into the meeting room in suitcases! I showed the publisher the entires and the detailed notes. I proved I was in command of the sales support network that would help launch in my book.
Today Spin-to-Win is swipe and swoosh with the latest iPhone app. You build an entire library of data, and it still won’t weigh more than 3.95 ounces. The Under-App, the app that makes it all happen, is one you need to implant in your head: the determination to put a fresh face on the details of the people in your sales life at the start of each and every business week.
