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Inattention is the root cause of lost customers and profits |
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Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
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Page 2 of 2 Being the source of attention
Everyone likes attention. We seek out the restaurant where the waiters or waitresses know us by name and give us that special attention. We prefer the dry cleaner and the barber and other service people who favor us with their attention. In the people business, attention is the most valuable thing there is. Knowing this, you have the key to gaining all of the business you can handle.
Insurance agents, DRP coordinators, dealership owners, and other potential sources of business for your shop all enjoy attention like everyone else. And you have the power to give them that special attention when you have an opportunity to do so. You have only two tasks. One is to create those opportunities. And the other is to demonstrate special attention for your prospects.
Keeping attention real
Creating the opportunities may be the easier of the two tasks. Sincerely giving people your full attention may not come as easy. Every day we are bombarded with false and phony “attention.” The telemarketer who calls you pretends to be interested in you. The waitress may give you her smiling “attention” to get a bigger tip. Salespeople practice the art of ingratiating themselves to prospects all of the time. But after a while you become good at spotting phony attention. And you brush these people off.
There are some natural ways to come across as genuine that will usually work. You probably already use some of them. When you’re selling a customer on using your shop, you probably ask a few probing questions to see if you have something in common with this person. When you find it, you prompt them to talk about it and you listen intently. That’s always easy when you’re really interested in the subject. That’s all it takes. Now all you have to do is apply this same technique to your communications with those insurance agents, DRP coordinators, dealership owners, commercial prospects and other potential sources of business for your shop.
Why inattention causes failure
The opposite of receiving attention is being ignored. If you’re not staying in touch with insurance connections, dealership contacts, commercial relations, and prior customers, in effect you’re ignoring them. No one likes to be ignored. Today a program to stay in touch with every source of business is essential. If you are seeking business from these important referral sources and not communicating with them regularly, in effect you are also ignoring them. That lack of attention nearly guarantees you’ll never get their business. You need to call, write, email, visit and otherwise communicate on a regular basis to win them over. Since you can’t be everywhere at once and have limited time to give your attention to all of the demands you already have on your time, you have to find a way to leverage yourself. Somehow you have to multiply your avenues of attention.
How you do this will depend on what works for you. Some people enjoy calling on the phone. Others like to play golf and arrange ways to meet out on the course. Still others don’t mind making personal visits and can somehow fit in the time to do them. And some people even have the ability to stand up and speak to groups, and this is a very powerful way to leverage yourself and multiply the number of people you reach at once with your message. A monthly letter, newsletter, postcard, or email would be the least time-consuming and most leveraged way to communicate inexpensively.
However you do it, the key to becoming successful is to give abundant attention to those people who are most able to send a whole lot of business your way, and to give them that attention as frequently as you can.
Tom Franklin has been a marketing representative and consultant for 40 years and is the author of the books, "Business Battlefield Marketing for Body Shops," "Tom Franklin's Top 40 Marketing Tactics for Body Shops," and "Strategies for Greater Body Shop Growth." His marketing company now provides marketing solutions and services for body shops and other businesses. He can be reached for questions or comments at (323) 871-6862, by fax at (323) 465-2228, or by email:
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