Saturday, December 5, 2009

What's the Benefit of Having this Contact on My List?

The theory is that every contact on my list is someone with whom I can do business; specifically, I believe that at some near point in the future, I will be able to convince them to part with money in exchange for a benefit I offer.

I believe that for this to happen, the contact will need an previously-established belief that I can fulfill the promise to bring benefit to them.

It follows that if I have a good track-record of bringing benefits to them, they are more likely to have established belief that I can fulfill the promise to bring benefit to them.

How do I establish a good track-record of bringing benefits to them?

By bringing benefits to them over a period of time; this period is, I think, known as "Establishing the Relationship".

We see now that if I can contact the person six or twelve times a year with small gifts that benefit the contact, I will have established in them the belief that I can fulfill the promise to bring benefit to them.

(Getting there!)

So here I am, staring at a contact record in my database, wondering what the heck I can bring to them this week as a small gift to add to the gifts I have not yet been able to bring to them.

That's right.

Two years on my contact list and I haven't stumbled across anything in all my reading and browsing that could be of interest to them.

Perhaps we really have nothing in common at all.

Hard to believe, but compare that with my track-record with my fellow networking entrepreneurs: we phone each other at least once a week ( Have You Forgotten This? ). They and I swap articles, news, ideas, jokes, chat by phone; we brag, we cry. We have a great deal in common.

Truth is, if I have been unable to find any snippets of information that might benefit this contact, then I am unlikely to establish a good track-record of bringing benefits to them.

And that means that that at no time in the future am I likely to convince them to part with money in exchange for a benefit I offer.

I should remove them from my list and stop wasting BOTH our times.

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