This topic is sadly one that seems to be moving in the wrong direction.

It’s the lack of communication with your customers. Your “touches” — how often they hear from you, whether a deliberate sales or marketing message, exposure to advertising, or planned non-sales communication (just keeping in touch, reminders, warranty or admin issues).

You should touch your customers at LEAST 12 times per year. If not every fortnight in some way. That can include electronic methods, if you know they’re getting opened and seen.

You should ESPECIALLY touch your customers when your business processes change. Case in point: one of our trade printers operates to a strict weekly schedule. It’s at least a page long: absolute submission deadlines and then promised delivery days.

It’s a pretty important document between the customer and supplier.

Last time I remember (a couple of years back), they sent us out a new copy when the document changed. And we rely on that every month — sometimes more often — to send them work.

We relied on it today when we submitted two large jobs that have a delivery schedule on Monday.

Only to find out — AFTER the job was put through their system, that delivery is now Tuesday — “it’s on the new schedule,” they said.

“Did you send us a copy?”

“No, we put it on our website, but it is hard to find.”

Is pretty close to how the conversation went.

What are they thinking? This is a very important document between us and this supplier — nearly as important as their price list — and one of only 2 important documents they need to keep us updated on. But they didn’t bother to let us know when it changed.

We’re an active customer. We should be touched regularly! But we’re not.

It would only have taken a friendly email. Another good reason to keep the relationship alive.

When was the last time you touched your customers? Or let them know of important changes?

At my sister’s birthday party yesterday, we watched the last quarter of the Port Adelaide v Hawthorn AFL game, which, in the end, was won on the last kick of the match to put Port Adelaide ahead for the first time since early in the second quarter, and give them second place on the ladder.

With a minute to go, Port Adelaide was still 7 points behind: 2 goals required to win. A goal with 47 seconds to go by Daniel Motlop (a story in itself: as in this story in the Age, “In similar circumstances only a year ago on the same ground, Motlop had taken a spectacular mark and missed his easy chance to kick the winning goal.”)

Motlop attributed his goal partly to having a little less pressure on him: it wasn’t to win the match, only to get to within 1 point of doing so. Opposing Hawthorn players of course saw fit to remind him of last year’s miss before he took the kick.

So much so was the incident last year an issue that Motlop and the club coach, Mark Williams, returned to the spot the night before the game and did a rerun: Motlop kicked the goal.

A great example of the power of mental and, in this case, physical, “rehearsal” to trigger the same successful action later. Same for finding a way to create thoughts to make the kick feel like it had less pressure on the outcome.

Then came the last kick of the match — only a goal would ensure victory — and Port Adelaide player Brett Ebert faced a tough angle. With 3 seconds to go, he kicked the goal.

Here’s the focus and thinking that ensured he would succeed. He says in the story:

“We looked at that during the week as a group, anybody in that situation, if you get one chance to do it, well obviously Mots missed and obviously he was disappointed, but it was good today to kick the goal. I never thought about missing it so that was good.“ (highlighing mine).

That’s the mental power of the right focus!

Speaking of Scriptlance, where I was today…

I had an issue that needed resolving. A small, tiny piece of code (3 lines) that I needed for a website. But, as it involved the Apache operating system, that’s not my background.

I had 4 choices.

1. Abandon my project and use another way. Not ideal for my objectives.
2. Spend HOURS online sifting through page after page of documentation looking for either guidance or examples
3. Find an online forum (I am a member of several, but none that deal with Apache) to ask for free advice. Will anyone reply? When?
4. Spend a few bucks on Scriptlance and leverage the knowledge of an expert to complete the job in no time flat. Someone eager to do the work within my deadline

Twelve bucks and about 10 minutes of time later, a programmer on Scriptlance solved my problem. Within a couple of hours, from posting the project, getting 8 bids, choosing the winner, and using the code, and then paying ($5 to Scriptlance, $7 to winning programmer), it was all done. Within that couple of hours, I spent about 10 minutes of time on this. So simple!

In all honesty, I don’t want to learn or understand Apache code. I don’t want to stubbornly search online, sometimes in vain, for fruitless hours, not finding an answer. I just want the job done, without too much time or effort. And I know that even if it took an hour, it’s not worth the $150-plus of my time to get it done.

Leverage. Perfect!

What are you doing that you could be leveraging through others?

Here’s an interesting project I saw tonight on Scriptlance…

Forget “real” comments — you can just pay others to create buzz on your behalf!

Using a false name, email address and URL.

GENUINE testimonials create authenticity. As technology becomes more pervasive (invasive!) the issue of TRUST will be harder and harder to communicate between vendor and client. The above project is exactly the reason why.

You could argue the project’s owner is simply short-cutting his or her way to an end result, as they’ll control the name, email address, URL and comment — all they want is someone to do it for them. But it’s a fine line between that point and just creating comments out of thin air.

So how in future will you convey trust? Visual and audio testimonials will be more important. So will a folder of original letters (not emails) signed and dated. So will the use of full names and locations (”meaningful specifics”), not anonymous initials that look fake. As authenticity gets harder to prove, those that make the effort will be better rewarded.

Do you believe everything you read?