how to build client relationships · building the relationships and making the connections that are...

How to Build Client Relationships

Kathy Paauw (guest)

Patricia Iyer (moderator)

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Copyright 2010 Patricia Iyer Associates No duplication

Pat: The program today is Build Customer Relationships and Attract More Business. Our speaker is Kathy Paauw who is joining us from Seattle, Washington. Kathy is a productivity consultant and a certified life coach and also an executive for Send Out Cards. On a personal level, she’s a wife and a mother and has been an independent business owner for about 14 years.

Our topic today is how in these troubled times can you attract more business. Kathy will be sharing her perspectives on this from the standpoint of being an independent business owner with some thoughts about what we can do to do a better job with staying in touch with our clients.

First of all Kathy, there’s been a lot of talk and there’s been a lot in the media about the state of the economy and the recovery. What do you hear or what are you seeing in terms of what people are thinking might be in our future?

Kathy: I’m hearing a lot of fear right now. I’m hearing the word “scarcity” and that is what ties in with the fear and I think that if you buy into that, the alarm, the spiral that goes with that is – it doesn’t help anyone’s business.

I come from a belief that there is an abundance of opportunity and it’s a matter of tapping into it and so that’s a very different mentality than what we’re going to hear on the news.

If you want to follow the statistics in the news, the doom and gloom and the unemployment rates and all of that and buy into that, then I believe what you focus on is what you get more of. So if that’s what you want to focus on then that’s what you’re going to get.

Pat: All right, when you said scarcity what were you referring to?



Kathy: Scarcity of resources, scarcity particularly for business owners – the sense that there just aren’t enough clients out there. The work needs to be done and I know I’m speaking before a group of legal nurse consultants. The legal issues aren’t going away.

People need the expertise; the attorneys don’t necessarily have that expertise, so they need that expertise. It’s a matter of building the relationships and making the connections that are going to result in business, because there is business to be had out there. It’s a matter of being the one who’s in the right place at the right time and is remembered.

People say that they do business with people they know, like, trust and I’m going to add to that, remember. Because if somebody knows, likes and trusts you but they don’t remember you when they’re ready to hire you, then it doesn’t really matter how much they know, like and trust you. So building that relationship, staying in touch is very, very important for being hired.

Pat: I know that in the Mastermind group that I belong to, one of our members is a person who teaches businesses how to do cold calling. And she has been talking with us about the pockets of activity, that there are some businesses that are absolutely booming and the key is to find the people who have the resources and feel the need for your services in today’s times.

Certainly that is an issue and the other thing that I have been reading recently is that because times are tough, there are more people looking towards filing malpractice suits specifically because they, for whatever reason, true or not true, see it as an opportunity to get compensated. Of course, they have to have a valid claim to begin with but there are more people seeking out attorneys, and more cases being filed against hospitals and physicians. So we’ve got in one sense kind of the best of both worlds in terms of having attorneys interested in the services of legal nurse consultants during good times and also during times when there are more potential claims out there.



Kathy: I think one of the keys is to establish yourself as a credible expert and then keep your name in front of those individuals, all those prospective people that you want to work with, to continually be remembered. Because if you contact them today, they may not have a need for your services. A month from now maybe they will and if they’ve forgotten who you are, if you haven’t left an impression and then stayed in touch, that makes a difference.

So I think there are a number of ways that you can establish your credibility and that’s a very important piece of building that relationship.

Pat: We’ve talked a little bit about staying in touch and I know there’s a term out there in the marketing world called the “sphere of influence”. What does that term mean?

Kathy: Your sphere of influence is the people that you have some connection with and even the people who those people have connection with. This gets into networking a little bit and I don’t know if people on the call belong to networking groups. There are so many ways to network and networking groups are one of many ways.

I do a lot of networking on the Internet. I have a website, I give away a lot of free information on my website, I offer two free webinars every month and people come to those and that’s how I build my relationship over the Internet. Then I have a newsletter – they subscribe to my free newsletter and I keep in touch with them through the newsletter.

So that’s one way. Another way is to join a networking group, Le Tip or BNI or whatever. But when you join those groups you’re going to meet people from all different walks of life and the greatest benefit is not the people that are in your group, it’s who they know.



Kathy: It’s really important if you’re going to do networking that you pick a group where you like the people in the group because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with them and that they are good at giving leads back to you and that you’re giving leads to them.

I personally don’t do the networking group thing. That’s not my thing but I know people who do who have fabulous results from that.

There are lots of other ways to connect with people we would call your sphere of influence and 66% of your business within the next year will come from your sphere of influence.

So the question becomes how are you staying in touch with those people. Successful companies are really seeking effective ways to let the customer know that they’re important and to stand out against the competition. I don’t know how competitive this field is either. The question that I would have for you is – is this a pretty competitive market?

Pat: I think that the level of competition falls into two layers. One is the experienced business owner who has a client base that has been built up over the years and then the other level are people who are trying to get into the field or maybe starting with a few clients and then building up. At that level there’s competition in terms of quality; there’s competition in terms of pricing.

There are some individuals who under-price their services in order to get the work and therefore making it difficult for those individuals who charge what would be a more reasonable level for their services.

I think the people who are inexperienced try to get their foot in the door. Hopefully they use their sphere of influence but often they send out a lot of mailings to attorneys or they hope that somebody will find them on a website search.

So there’re many people interested in doing the work but not quite understanding the key in terms of how to reach the customer in a persuasive way, particularly if they don’t know



that individual or don’t have any way to get to that individual through another person.

Kathy: Okay. I’ve seen the buckshot approach where people just kind of shoot things out into the atmosphere and then a very targeted approach and I prefer a more targeted approach, especially when you’re using marketing dollars. Really getting clear about your ideal clients and who knows those people and where do they hang out, what do they read, who do they talk to and that can help you formulate who your referral prospects are going to be.

In other words, you want to build a relationship with the people who are the most likely to make good referrals to you. And so identifying who those people are and then beginning to build a relationship with them is important. One of the things I like to do to build a relationship is I love sending things in the mail. I’m going to use an example as a productivity consultant because I don’t know the field well enough to give an example for your field.

Let’s say that I want to develop a relationship with somebody who could make a lot of referrals to me for doing productivity consulting. So I put together a campaign – and it could be a monthly campaign, it could be 4 times a year, I decide how often I want to touch this person. Let’s say it’s a quarterly campaign. So I create a mailing, a four-piece mailing, and I put tips inside of that mailing that are going to help individuals to make their lives easier. At the same time, I’m establishing my own credibility in the field as a productivity consultant. So I’m giving them tips about how they can be more productive and these are real life tips that they can take and use right away.

By doing so, by giving away some of my expertise I’m establishing credibility, I’m keeping my name in front of them because they’re getting something in the mail from me and I’m thought of in a positive way because I’m making their life easier.



I’m not pitching my services; I’m just staying in touch with them and sharing my expertise. They can figure out that I might also take them out to lunch and learn more about what they’re doing or something like that. So there are a lot of other ways. I don’t think just sending things in the mail is enough. I think there are other things that need to be done as well; and of course making referrals to them.

Pat: When you talked about having a four-piece mailing, what would the typical components be in that envelope?

Kathy: I use cards and it depends on the nature of the card what the topic is but I also will send cards for different holidays. So that may not have any tips in it, it’s just well wishing, building a relationship. If I have pictures of that person I can load that picture up onto the front of a card and I can put a voice bubble with some humor in it; I love using humor.

Let’s say I had lunch with the person and I had the wait person take a picture of us sitting at the booth at the restaurant. I will send a card afterwards with that picture on the front and a little voice bubble that might have something that was humorous or something that was thought provoking and I’ll put that on the front of the card.

They love picture cards. They’re going to keep that card. They’re going to keep it out. People don’t tend to throw away pictures. So they’re going to keep that out which means that I’m going to have top of mind influence on them because they’re seeing my card all the time.

So one component can be pictures. Sometimes that’s not appropriate or you don’t have pictures that are appropriate to use. Then inside the card, I think the more heartfelt, the better.

I think one of the things that’s happened in our society is that we’ve become so disconnected, we’re so connected and we’re disconnected all at the same time. We’re very connected electronically with our texting and our cell phones and our



email and all these things but we’ve lost that human touch. We’ve lost that personal…the best way I can say it is the human touch.

It’s become so impersonal. When you do a blast email out to a whole bunch of people that has nothing personal about it, that has a very different feeling than getting a personal card or letter in the mail that is clearly written just to you.

Even if it’s not written just to you, it feels like it is just because of the nature, the tone of the message. So there are ways that we can write messages that feel more personal, and I think that’s really important to look at. I like to put myself in the recipient’s seat and imagine if I received this how would it make me feel. I want that person to have warm positive feelings towards me versus, “Oh, no, here’s another piece of mail that I can throw in the recycling bin.”

So I like to reverse it and imagine if I got this how would it make me feel, what kind of a response would it elicit and that’s really important to pay attention to.

Pat: If we focus on the importance of staying in touch with customers, then the flip side of that is that we know that there are companies that are not doing that diligently. What do you think holds people back from making those connections with clients?

Kathy: I think that the biggest thing is time. We all have good intentions; we mean well and we want to stay in touch; we know it’s important. I mean this isn’t the first time people have heard that and I include myself in that by the way.

It takes time to sit down and send a handwritten message, such as “Thank you for your time” or whatever you’re sending. It just takes time to do that and we’re all short on time, especially small business owners; we wear many different hats. So it can be challenging to handle all of the things. We do our own



marketing, our own bookkeeping and all of that and it’s a great challenge.

So I think that in order to stay in touch in a meaningful way, one thing that has helped me a lot is to be able to automate that. You mentioned in your introduction that I’m an executive with Send Out Cards; that is a company that enables me to do just that.

I’ve been able to create what’s called a campaign and that can be a one piece or a multiple piece campaign. I write my own text for that, what goes inside the card and again I’m going to use an example that we can all relate to.

I did this for my Christmas cards for both family and friends as well as for professionals, where I created a card. I had pictures on the front and on the inside I typed my heartfelt message. I created a group and in the group I identified who was to receive that card and Send Out Card merges the first name into each card. By the way, I have my own “Kathy” handwriting font in my account so when I type my message, it is printed in my own handwriting in a real physical paper greeting card. This is not an e-card. The company addresses the envelope, stamps it with a real first class stamp, stuffs the card in the envelope, licks it shut, and takes it to the post office for me all for less than a dollar.

That has helped me to do a better job of staying in touch because I can literally click send and I can send the same message to hundreds of people at one time if I want. After I click send before it’s printed I can go in and edit each individual card to add something personal so that it doesn’t feel like a canned response, if I want to do that. I don’t have to but if I want to do that I have that ability.

So that’s been one productivity tool for me that I love as a productivity consultant working with small business owners. That’s been one of the big challenges that I’ve seen is that people really want to reach out and stay in touch and build those relationships. But who has the time to sit down and handwrite a bunch of cards all the time? That’s a big challenge.



Pat: That certainly is a cost effective way, or at least a time effective way of doing that. We have been sending out a newsletter to a couple thousand people 4 times a year and doing the printing and doing the stuffing and doing the stamping in h. This time we are considering using a printing house, giving them the data base and designing the newsletter differently so it can be a self mailer.

One of the people that I consulted with in the past about this answered my question about that cover letter because we’ve spent an enormous amount of time on mail merges with a personalized cover letter and I found out that many legal nurse consultants are not sending cover letters with their newsletters. They send the newsletter out without the cover letter which eliminates a whole big step and part of the expense of doing a mailing.

Are you finding other companies or different ways of cost effectively staying in touch other than what we’ve talked about so far?

Kathy: Another one that that I mentioned briefly was doing webinars. I don’t know how popular that would be with attorneys. I know that they have limited time like everyone else and you have to make it about a topic that is of real interest to them that has a draw. But if you can record and it doesn’t have to be – like this call doesn’t have a visual component to it, it can but it doesn’t have to.

One of the benefits of doing it this way instead of having the webinar where you have the screen shots and everything is that you can be recorded and loaded onto an iPod for a busy attorney who couldn’t make it to a call. After the call you can also send a link to the recording and say, “You can load this onto your iPod, burn it on a CD, listen to it in your car and here’s how you will benefit from listening to this presentation.”



So again you want to build relationships. Whatever you can do to establish credibility and build relationships and be thought of in a very positive way as a person who has expertise that they want and need. Then adding the human touch to that, adding the personal side where they feel appreciated, they feel honored, they feel positive about hearing from you instead of “Oh, here’s another person pitching their services.”

I think that’s really, really important and I’ll give you an example. I have 3 real estate agents that work for the same agency and this agency puts out a newsletter for their agents and I get the same newsletter from three different agents and the only difference on the newsletter is the picture of the agent and their contact information. Otherwise it’s the same exact newsletter and there’s nothing personal about it. When I receive that I throw it straight into the recycling bin.

Now, there is a fourth agent with that company who doesn’t use those newsletters and she sends letters, cards, she does things like around Mothers Day, she sent something about how much she missed her mother and just encouraging people to reach out if their mother was still alive and let them know how meaningful they were in their life.

It had nothing to do with real estate. There was another time when the postage went up and she sent a page of one cent stamps because it had gone up one penny and she said, “I hope this helps you save some time so that you don’t have to stand in line at the post office to use up those stamps that you might have in your drawer.” And just little things like that. She did that years ago and I still remember it. And guess who gets my referrals? I’ve been in my house for 17 years and we’re not moving so, I haven’t used her services but I’ve made at least five referrals that have turned into sales for her.

Pat: Wow!

Kathy: That’s significant, very significant.



Pat: Those one cent stamps have been paid back many times over.

Kathy: Exactly, because she has built a relationship with me and the others have not by sending their prefab newsletter with nothing personal on it. I feel that I know her and I know her as a caring person and she also sends some things that establish her credibility and expertise and she’s a GRI and she’s got the distinctions – the top 1% in her company and all. I get that stuff too but I get it co-mingled with some very personal things that help her to stand out as a human being who cares, who has built a relationship with me, and so that’s who gets my referrals.

I think any industry can do that. Now I want to share an example, since we’re on the topic of real estate. I know a real estate agent in North Carolina who has done a 12-piece campaign and I’m not suggesting that this would necessarily be the right model but I just want to give you an example.

They’re all post cards and she’s used Send Out Cards, it’s a 31 cent post card with a 28 cent stamp on it and each month she does some community service in her local community. In November it was a coat & blanket drive and the post card said, “This Saturday I will be in your neighborhood collecting clean and gently used coats and blankets that I will take to the local homeless shelter”, and she signs it, “your real estate agent who cares” and then her name and her phone number and that’s all that’s said about real estate is in the signature.

For December it was Toys for Tots; January I think was one of the only months that she’s offering a free market analysis, so that’s not community service, it’s real estate, but February is a canned food drive and so every month she’s doing something in the community and she’s received phone calls from people who have said “I have been using another real estate agent but I’ve decided to start working with you because I love what you’re doing in our community and I want to give you my business.”



She sends that post card out to 210 families every month. She created it one time; she clicked send; it’s all automated; it automatically goes out once a month without her ever lifting another finger. She clicks send one time, 12 cards over 12 months, to 210 families.

So there are ways to do things that are high tech and high touch and save a lot of time and have a pretty high impact. I don’t know what model would work best for legal nurse consultants but I’m sure that there are lots of ideas. It might be fun some other time to have a little brain storming session and just have people throw ideas out about what they could do to stay in touch in a meaningful way.

Pat: I want to encourage our listeners to remember that we have a Q&A panel for this program. We did receive a request or question before we began about asking about handouts. I did get that message. We do not have any handouts for this presentation but at the end I’ll ask Kathy to provide her contact information for anybody who would like to speak with her directly or potentially get more information.

Can we turn, Kathy, to the idea of a business touching its clients? And we’ve talked about some of the ways that that can be done through webinars, through newsletters, through cards, through mailings. How frequently do you recommend that business owner be in touch with clients in the ways that we’re discussing?

Kathy: With existing clients?

Pat: Yes.

Kathy: So they would be perhaps inactive clients?



Pat: Yes, yes.

Kathy: Okay. I think that there are a number of factors that you would look at for determining that. But I think quarterly is a good amount of time where you’re not going to be completely forgotten.

I’ve seen statistics that have shown that for each month that you don’t stay in touch with someone, that you lose 10% of your influence. So if 10 months go by without communication then you’ve lost 100% of your influence. We’ve talked about sphere of influence.

Pat: Hmm, that’s pretty grim.

Kathy: Yes it is. So I want to share a story. This actually happened to a professional organizer that I was coaching. She had done some work with a client, it was a residential client that she had helped organize her house and she loved this client. It was when I was coaching this person, she said she was her all time favorite client. We really looked at what is it that makes her, her favorite so that she could be more targeted in trying to attract more of like people.

A couple of years went by and she didn’t hear from the client and the client didn’t hear from her and one day she ran into her in a grocery store, it was a couple of years after they had finished their work together. The woman was very pleased with her work by the way. So a couple of years went by, ran into her at the grocery store and the woman said “Oh, I thought maybe you’d moved out of the area, I haven’t heard from you. I wish I had known that you were still in the area because I needed some additional assistance and I also have several friends who did and so I found somebody else. She didn’t do nearly as good a job as you did and I referred all my friends to her too.” This woman was just heartbroken that her favorite client…and she had not kept in touch.



How sad, because the woman said “I would have hired you in a heartbeat if I had known that you were still in the area working. I assumed you weren’t because I hadn’t heard from you.”

So these things happen. And it’s happened to me too, where I’ve hired someone and years later I need a service and they’re not even on the radar. I hire someone else and I don’t like them nearly as much and then later on after I’ve hired the other person, I remember, oh yeah, I had hired that person I liked so much, I wish I’d have remembered them. And they didn’t keep in touch.

I think that keeping in touch is just so critical and if you want to stay top of mind, it’s not just people who know, like and trust you, it’s people who also remember you when they’re ready to make a buying or a hiring decision.

Pat: That’s a good point. I have found out when I’ve done my newsletters, which are typically a front/back page on a particular medical/legal topic, that it doesn’t matter what the topic is. I will get calls from people who will say, “I saw your newsletter, Pat, I have a case for you.” The case will have nothing to do with the topic. I think once or twice I actually hit an attorney with a newsletter on a topic that related to a case that he had in his office that day. But otherwise it is the phenomena that I think that you’re describing of remembering that Kathy or Pat or another individual is out there and can assist.

Kathy: It’s the “know, like, trust and remember” factor. We assume because somebody knows, likes and trusts us that of course they’re going to hire us when they’re ready. But what if they don’t remember us, then they’re not going to hire us, right?

Pat: True.



Kathy: We take for granted that we will be remembered because we were liked. That’s just not true. We might but we might not and the other thing is if somebody that isn’t nearly as credible or let’s take the example of a legal nurse consultant who’s just getting started in business and has just sent a flyer out to a bunch of attorneys and is offering a lower rate. The attorneys are ready to hire and they just got that in the mail and they haven’t heard from you for a very long time – you’re not on the radar, they are. Plus their rates look pretty good. So that raises the chance that competitor is going to get the business.

If both of you have been in touch with that attorney and you’ve been establishing your credibility and reminding them of your expertise by sending them great tips that are actually helping them in their practice right now and they remember you well for that, then you’re more likely to get a phone call.

Pat: Boy, am I feeling guilty for not sending out my newsletter since June – boy oh boy Kathy [chuckles]. I feel like this message is right for me.

Kathy: You know it works, you just told me that.

Pat: Absolutely. Guess what I’ll be doing next week.

Kathy: So here’s my question for you Pat. What has stopped you from doing it?

Pat: It requires me to sit down and write it and I’ve been doing teleseminars and writing articles and editing books and finishing chapters and all the other things as well as working on cases.



Kathy: So life happens and it happens to all of us. That’s why I love having an automated system where yes, there’s up front work – if I’m going to do a quarterly mailing or a monthly mailing like the real estate agent with the post card, she does the mailing every month, but she created all of that in one sitting, she designed the whole campaign, all 12 pieces and then she clicked send and she was done.

Now I have some campaigns that I use like that and I’ll be out and about and somebody will say, “Oh I just got your card, that was so nice, thank you so much.” I clicked send seven months ago and I have no idea of what they just got. I have to run back to the office, look in their account and see because there’s a history of everything you’ve ever sent in the past. I can go look it up and remember then what it is that they just got. I’ve just learned to say “You’re welcome”, because I have no idea what I sent.

Pat: Yes.

Kathy: But the point is that it made them feel good, it made them feel important, valued and remembered and I was able to use a productivity tool that saves me a lot of time, turns my intention into reality. It’s actually going out, it’s not just I’d like to get it out – it’s actually happening and so that’s really powerful and it’s really important for small business owners to keep in touch.

We have 168 hours a week left like everybody else, but we don’t have a bunch of employees working for us that we can delegate to. We don’t have a marketing department; we don’t have all these departments to delegate to. So I like delegating to systems whenever I can and I do want to put a plug in for hiring help. I have several virtual assistants. I don’t know if everyone on the call is familiar with a VA or a virtual assistant is…



Pat: No, but I think it would be helpful to explain because it’s a term that might not be familiar. I was in meeting with an attorney a couple of weeks ago and I talked about getting a virtual assistant for a business that I was discussing and he looked at me and he said, “What is a virtual assistant? You mean it’s a real person or is it a virtual person?” And he went off—he just went off.

Kathy: I’ll explain it then. I have several virtual assistants. A virtual assistant is a professional. Most of the times they’re women but not always and they’re typically women who used to work for corporate America, got tired of the rat race, as probably many of us on this call have once been there, and wanted to call her own shots, work from home, be there for her kids when they got home from school, set her own hours, and be able to set her own vacation schedule.

Basically they’re administrative professionals who help you with the administrative parts of your business without you having to have an employee.

They’re independent consultants like we are and you pay them by the hour for work that they do in their office. Now one of my VA’s is in Denver, I’m in Seattle. Another one happens to be local but we don’t meet face to face. She just happens to be local; she wouldn’t need to be because we do all of our work through Internet and telephone calls with me delegating things to her. I’ll send her things or I’ll call her and she does things for me and then reports back, usually via email about the results.

I have a bookkeeping service that does all of my bookkeeping for me, fills out my quarterly stuff and all that stuff is handled by a bookkeeper. That is in a sense a virtual assistant but at a little higher level. I hire people to do my taxes. So I have a lot of people that I delegate to and my rule of thumb is this. Do only what you love doing and what you are the very best at – to the greatest extent that you can.



Now I can’t say that a hundred percent of the things I do I love and I’m the best at, but I can say that most of what I do is the part of my job, part of my work that I love and that I am the very best at. And if I’m not good at something or I don’t love doing it, as much as possible, I want to delegate that.

Here’s what’s happened to my business as a result. People get all hung up on “Oh, but that’s going to cost so much money” It’s called leveraging your time. The more you leverage, the more money you’re going to make because that gives me more time to do the part of my work that I really love. That’s working, coaching and consulting with people. That’s what I enjoy doing and that’s what I can bill for. I’m actually not taking new clients at this time but I’m working with my Send Out Cards team, giving away my coaching and consulting services and that’s what I love doing.

That’s what I get to do and the stuff that I don’t like doing, the bookkeeping and some other things, I delegate. So there’s a company called AssistU, I can’t remember if that’s dot com or dot org but if you look up AssistU in Google it should come right up. What they do is they certify virtual assistants, so they have to go through a program to prove that they have the expertise that they say they have, because anybody could hang their shingle and call themselves a VA. And you want to know that they have passed some tests so to speak, that somebody else has said “Yes, these people do indeed have expertise in what they say they have expertise in.”

What they do is, you fill out a form about what it is that you’re looking for and AssistU matches up the VAs that meet your needs and they send you the names and the contact information of those people and then it’s up to you to contact them and interview them.

So that’s one way to find a virtual assistant and they have them for everything. I mean if you want somebody who creates great PowerPoint presentations, you give them your raw material and they make it pretty. If you want a bookkeeper or if you want somebody who can do cold calls or follow up calls or you know is really good on the phone, they have everything. And they



become your assistants and I have several because different people have different areas of expertise and so I hire different people for different reasons.

Pat: Do you have any kind of broad range in terms of the hourly rates that such individuals are charging for their services?

Kathy: I think the kind of the going rate is around $35.00 an hour and that might seem really high for administrative work but you have to remember they’re not employees, so you’re not paying any benefits. They have their own overhead; they’re using their own computer; you don’t have to provide space for them. They’re usually very efficient at what they do so they can do it quicker than you might be able to do it yourself or that other people might do it.

There’s usually a 10-hour-a-month retainer. So you commit to 10 hours a month and whether you use it up or not and they don’t carry over to the next month. You can’t stock pile them, that’s kind of a standard.

Now there are also independent people that you’re not going to find necessarily through AssistU. I’ve met a lot of people through just different interactions that I’ve had with people that have said “I’m doing virtual work” If I happen to know the particular kind of work that they’re doing and I know they’re good at it, I may not care that they’re not certified to do it. I just want good work; I want confidentiality. There are some things that are important to me and I just want to be sure those are in place.

But I think that leveraging either by delegating to systems to people is really important for the small business owner. We can’t do it all and if we try to do it all, we’re spending so much time doing our backend administrative stuff that we’re not out doing the billable hour stuff.



Pat: A couple of additional resources are to use a company like elance.com or guru.com to identify individuals that you can connect with in ways that would certainly never be possible without the Internet.

Kathy: Some of those are in India and the Philippines and you have to consider a few other things when you’re looking overseas. One is that sometimes their English is a little bit interesting. They’re usually very polite; they’ve been trained well in customer service. But I will not hire someone overseas to do any phone work for me because their accent is so thick that it’s really frustrating to the person speaking with them, because they can’t understand what they’re saying. They might have very good command of the English language but if they have a thick accent it can be hard– if you’ve ever called technical support for anything you might know what I’m talking about.

Pat: I do, in fact I know it quite well.

Kathy: That’s not a slam to people from India or anywhere else. It’s a fact, we have accents for them too and they may have trouble understanding us, I don’t know. But there are certain kinds of work that I think that might be a possibility. Their rate is much lower in India than it is in the US.

Some people have issues with paying somebody outside of the US; they want to keep it in this country. So there are a lot of factors to consider, but yes there are many, many people out there that are available to assist you.

Pat: Let’s turn in the remaining time and talk a little bit about encouraging the clients, who know, like, trust and remember us, see I’ve got the formula down…



Kathy: Good.

Pat: …who are in that category and they’ve got individuals in their sphere of influence who could use our services. I know personally, I sometimes feel awkward about saying “Hey, you know anybody else who could use my services?” Is there any graceful way for asking for referrals from clients?

Kathy: There are two schools of thought on that. I’ve heard one of my colleagues said, “Don’t ask for a referral, deserve it. I’ve heard others say you’ve got to ask for the referrals. If you don’t ask you don’t get.

I’m trying to remember statistics that I’ve seen about referrals. It was pretty amazing. I’m just looking, I’ve got some statistics here, I’m just looking to see if I can find it quickly. It was a statistic about how many people don’t ask for referrals but if they did that they would get them and it was alarming.

Oh, here it is…we potentially lose up to 19% of additional business because we don’t ask for referrals. Opportunities are never lost they just go somewhere else, 91% of our customers say they would give us a referral, 80% haven’t been encouraged to do so.

Pat: Oh.

Kathy: I can’t tell you what the source of that was, I got a bunch of statistics and I asked the person who provided them where they came from and he couldn’t tell me so I can’t verify those stats, but I think it’s believable. So often when people are happy with what we provide, they’re happy to give referrals and it just doesn’t cross their mind.

It can be something as simple as “Referrals are always appreciated.” Of course when someone does give a referral, I



think it’s really important that you thank them. I have given many referrals out that haven’t even been acknowledged. Not a phone call, an email, a thank you note and I’ll be talking with the person months later and something will come up in the conversation and I find out that someone I referred has been working with them. But they didn’t even so much as pick up the phone or drop an email to me.

I have other people who every time I send a referral, I get a handwritten thank you note in the mail and often times it includes a gift card, a Starbucks Gift Card. I had one person who would send gift cards each time and then she also called and said, “I’d like to take you out to lunch just to express my appreciation for all the referrals you’ve sent my way and I feel really badly because I’ve never sent referrals to you.” Now this was back when I was doing organizing- and she said I keep my ears open but the people I know who are disorganized they don’t recognize they need help and so it would be really awkward to suggest that they call you.

I said, “I totally understand” and then we went to lunch and she brought me a physical gift and I said, “You know this really isn’t necessary, I’m happy to give you the referrals. You do great work.”

Again, I haven’t been in touch with her for probably 10 years, she’s gone out of business. She had a business called Just My Type and she did typing for people. She was just incredible at thanking me and I still remember her name, her company name and it’s been 10 years since I’ve been in touch with her.

I remember her, I know, like, trust and remember her because she did a good job of building relationship with me. And she was top of mind; it was real easy to make referrals for her.

Pat: It sounds like she had a memorable way of handling it.

Kathy: She did. It was very personal, I really felt appreciated and it wasn’t because she sent me the gift cards - they were $5 or $10



gift cards, they weren’t big cards. It wasn’t what she sent; it was how she made me feel.

“It doesn’t matter what people say, it doesn’t matter what people do. It matters…” I might be butchering this a little bit… “what they remember is how you made them feel.”

That’s why I remember Lillian Reed because of how she made me feel every time I sent her a referral. So I think it’s vitally important that we express appreciation when we do get referrals. One of the things again that I love about Send Out Cards is that they have gift cards. When I send a thank you card, I can insert a gift card with it, without having to get in the car and drive to the store and do it. So again, I’m delegating to a system which just saves me a lot of time and it saves me money too.

Pat: We started this call with talking about the economy and the concerns and the fear and the scarcity. In light of where people are now, are there any messages that you think are very appropriate that potential clients or actual clients want to hear right now?

Kathy: I think that they want to hear positive messages, that they want to feel a sense of hope. Some are looking for life lines, some have a more positive outlook already but I think that keeping things up and positive on not buying into the gloom and doom – we get plenty of that through the news and just not buying into it. There is plenty of work out there and it’s a matter of building the relationships and staying in touch so you’re remembered, so that when the time is right, you will get the business or the referral.

Pat: It sounds like a good message. If any of our listeners would like to contact you for additional information, how should they reach you?



Kathy: I have a couple of websites that I will share and one is at bethoughtfulnow.com and that website will take you to some information about the company that I’ve been working with for 4 years, Send Out Cards.

If you want to send a few cards out on me, I’ll even pay for the stamps. Send someone a Valentine or a birthday card or a Just Because card, just expressing appreciation.

I want to make a little plug for – this is putting my coaching hat on for a minute – there is such power in getting into the gratitude habit and what I mean by that is starting each day, every day by sending a card of gratitude to someone you care about. A card of gratitude or appreciation, it can be personal or professional. It doesn’t matter but not pitching your services, just saying I appreciate you, I care about you or a card of encouragement.

When you extend yourself to another person like that the relationships that you’ll build will be amazing and what it does for you personally is it elevates you. I said don’t buy into the gloom and doom. When you start your day thinking about what you appreciate, what’s good in your life, what’s right in your life, it sets the tone for the whole day and it’s a really powerful tool.

So set up an account, a Send Out Cards gift account by going to bethoughtfulnow.com and try it out for the next three days. There’s enough in there for you to send 3 cards. Send a card a day for the next three days and see what that does for you personally to send a card of gratitude or appreciation.

The other website that I’ll share and I’ve mentioned before, I’m not taking clients, so I’m not looking for more business here but I have a very robust website that has a lot of free information on productivity and it’s kind of my productivity life coaching web site this is at orgcoach.net, www.orgcoach.net and I’ve got a couple of free webinars I teach each month.



One is called Buried in Paper for those who are challenged with managing the paper and the information that flies into your busy life. You can learn a system that will teach you how to manage all of that. I teach a practice for making decisions quickly and what to do with those things when they come in so that you’re not piling things up. So if that appeals to you, I teach that once a month and you’re welcome to attend.

It’s free; I don’t sell anything. I love teaching that class because I get such great feedback. I’ve been teaching it for well over 5 years now, coming up on seven or eight years now, now that I think about it.

So orgcoach.net and bethoughtfulnow.com and if you want to email me my email is [email protected].

Pat: Terrific. I appreciate your time today, Kathy, and all the tips that you have shared with us. And I’ll be sitting down next week and writing out my newsletter.

Kathy: Great.

Pat: I thank you for the nudge on that one.

Kathy: You’re welcome.

how to build client relationships · building the relationships and making the connections that are...

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