The New Year is a time of refreshing (and it seemed a lot of people kept refreshing the first week of January and then it got very busy the second week), out with the old, in with the new, etc. I’ve seen a few things questioning why it’s this way when for most people, what they do this week is similar to what they did before the holidays.
The answer for most of us is because it’s a new tax year. We record on an annual basis to pay the taxman. It often also means new initiatives, because it’s a new recording period.
My big change is realizing there are some areas in which I can add great value, but don’t have the bandwidth to help these people. Thus, I have a new employee who will take some office work away from me, get out in the community, and eventually take on client work.
When I say get out in the community I mean it. Recently I saw the following in a blog post by Alan Weiss:
According to Jonah Berger’s research (the author of Invisible Influence and Contagious) word-of-mouth is by far still the THE most important marketing dynamic, and only 7% of it is virtually viral. You read that correctly: All of the rest is personal and conversational in “real” life, not virtual… Stop hiding behind a keyboard and get out on the streets to meet with buyers. You don’t build relationships with a “return” key. You build them with a handshake.
No matter what business you’re in, electronic outreach is fine, but it won’t get you much in the way of long-term clients/customers. As I preach to my clients, and tell students in my class at the local SBA office, when you do the things you’re supposed to do (meet people), good things happen. And it’s the good things that are memorable and make us appreciate what we do.
“Try as often as possible to do something you’ll remember, because memories make us rich.” Vic Ketchman
