OPINION: A commitment to daily outreach takes little time and has profound long-term benefits.
You wake up, shower, brush your teeth, and comb/fix your hair (if you have any, men). Every day like clockwork.
Those are personal habits, rarely if ever left undone.
But what about your (personal) business habits?
Do you have the same consistency in your daily business habits? And I wonder how many of your daily habits take the long-term view. Or are you just trying to make sales to make quota?
I want to talk about one element of your personal business habits: your personal outreach, your daily outreach that builds attraction, personal brand, authority, known expertise, recognition, position in your industry, Google rank, social media presence, top-of-mind awareness, and reputation.
It sounds like a lot of work, but it actually takes less time than your morning bathroom routine once you’re set up and rolling. And these are habits that create attraction, real attraction.
The cool part is it costs (almost) nothing. All you have to do is allocate the time, and (most important) commit to daily outreach.
Here’s the master list of available resources that you must employ and deploy.
This is the prime professional outlet for finding, attracting, building and staying in touch with business connections.
Outreach: Be personal and creative. Don’t use the lines and messages provided by LinkedIn, use your own words. Post something of value, and ask your connections to share it with their connections.
Provides the opportunity to create one-on-one dialogue with customers, especially by responding to their praise and concerns.
Outreach: Post positive service stories and videos. Respond to issues within two hours.
Use just 140 characters to put your character on public display. Make every character count. Have something profound to say that your followers would be compelled to send to their followers.
Outreach: Tweet a value message at least twice a day, one that your followers would find interesting enough to re-tweet to their followers. The point of Twitter is to be re-tweeted by your followers, thereby exposing you to new people (customers).
• Blog or personal website
Can be a starting place, a landing place, and a jumping-off place for stories, ideas, opinions, photos, videos, training, and anything else your customers or followers would find interesting and valuable. On a blog you can mix business and personal, as long as it’s not offensive. Your posts can be subscribed to and delivered by email.
Outreach: Blog with a minimum of a weekly, if not daily, post. You have unlimited space for text, photos, and videos. Your blog is an opportunity for people to realise both your intellect and your passion.
• YouTube
Video is the new black. This is a chance to convey messages, training, subject matter expertise, testimonials, and offers of value. Your viewers can subscribe, and your posts can be cross-pollinated on your blog, your Facebook page, and your LinkedIn profile.
And it’s free.
• E-zine
A weekly, informational piece that can contain some promotional material, but must have mostly helpful information.
My outreach
On Twitter I am @gitomer. On Facebook I am Facebook.com/jeffreygitomer. My blog is gitomer.com/blog. My YouTube channel is youtube.com/buygitomer. On LinkedIn, search my name, Jeffrey Gitomer. My e-zine is published on gitomer.com/ezine. My website is gitomer.com.
You’d think that with all these career building, low-cost or free opportunities, benefits, and life-building assets that every salesperson on the planet would be the master of these outlets. But you would be wrong, drastically wrong.
All of your outreach builds your Google ‘searchability’, ranking, and visibility. The foundation and fulcrum point of your reputation rests on Google. Most of the time Google is the perfect platform and reference point, unless you try to fool it by manipulating your status.
Outreach is a lifetime process. When done well, it builds every aspect of your brand and reputation. And, over time, it creates the real law of attraction – a law based on value offerings, in spite of what you may have read or heard elsewhere.
Jeffrey Gitomer is an American author, professional speaker and business trainer, who writes and lectures internationally on sales, customer loyalty and personal development. © 2017 All rights reserved. Don’t reproduce this document without written permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
