Staying in Touch

I ran into another log-jam late last week. Wading through the contact list each day – first tackle the “follow-up calls”, folks I’d promised to call on a certain day – then the “stale calls” – folks who I hadn’t called for the longest time.

Then slam! Into the brick wall of staring at a contact with no idea what to say when I pick up the phone. Bump them forward to be a follow-up call tomorrow; let tomorrow worry about that one.

Likewise the next one.

And the next.

I was caught staring at a series of contacts with not a single reason for calling them – except that I hadn’t called them for a long time.

That night at a boring seminar it dawned on me – I had become too focused on phoning my contacts, and had forgotten that I was supposed to be “Keeping In Touch”, and Keeping In Touch is more than just a telephone call.

It is an email, a visit, a postal mail, and therein lay my solution.

If there is no benefit to my contact by my phoning them, I can find an article to cut and mail to them (another reason for keeping stacks of magazines from my University in Perth, Western Australia, and for hoarding back-issues of IT World Canada, and so on)

There HAS to be a suitable articles in that pile, somewhere.

And if there isn’t, why not just print out one of my blog articles (one that is relevant) and mail that off.

It’s is keeping my name in the front of their mind.

And that’s what counts.