Everyone want to nurture their customers and prospects. We want to provide them meaningful, relevant content. We want them to be informed and updated. We want to build our thought leadership. We want to build a relationship. At the point when they are ready to buy, we want them to remember us, pick up the phone and give us a call.
But too often, nurturing becomes pestering. Do I really need to hear from you every day? I can barely keep up with my job, is your content–regardless how compelling really meaningful and relevant on a daily basis–or could you at least give me the option of letting me know the frequency at which I want content.
Do I need to hear from you with the same message through two different channels? I’m not talking blogs, versus emails. I’m talking about the same message emailed to me from two different people in your organization? There are easy solutions to this–most systems people have easy means of preventing this–so it must mean you are purposefully trying to annoy me.
Do I need the same content, day after day? Do you think I’m hard of hearing and you need to repeat yourself with exactly the same email? Do you think my memory is so short, that I would have forgotten what you sent yesterday?
Do I need multiple messages each with a different piece of content every day? It sure would be easier if I just got one message, but I look in my inbox, and see multiple messages, with different titles, from the same sender. I don’t have time to filter these, so I just delete them.
Are your messages not compelling enough to stand out, so you have to smother me with volume?
Nurturing can be very powerful. But you’re loving me to death!
I think this is an excellent point. In the interest of being motivated to do what we can for our clients, it’s easy sometimes to be overzealous. I think the key is to really actively listen to clients and assess what they’re saying as well as what they’re not saying. Often, in retrospect, it’s easy to pick up on the clues they were giving. The trick is to proactively assess and modify approaches to keep them engaged and informed, but not smothered.
Sammee: Nicely said! Thanks for joining the conversation. Regards, Dave