Rainmaker Resource #4: Tracking Down a Contact
Tracking down and talking to people you went to school with or worked with earlier in your life can be great fun and generate leads for lots of new business.
This is even more true of old clients. One person I know had consulted to a financial services mega corporation for years, when a sudden change in the CEO put most of his contacts at the company on the street looking for work. He stayed in touch with about ten of the most senior ones who quickly found jobs in other organizations. Three of these brought his firm in with them.
Three years later he took a look at a list of other people he had known at the mega corporation who were no longer there and with whom he had lost touch. He tracked down fifteen more. One of them bought $1,000,000 worth of services this year. The ballot is out on many of the others.
Finding old contacts is easier that it has ever been, because of the power of the Internet. Lifehacker.com has just posted an article entitled, How to Track Down Anyone on Line. This is a valuable source for finding people whom you have misplaced over the years.
But, before we give in and do it the easy way, let’s be sure it is the best way. In the old days (just yesterday, if you are my age), finding a lost contact often meant calling mutual friends who might know where she had gone. You might have to contact three people before finding someone who knew where the contact could be found.
Not as efficient as a Google search, it provided a wonderful excuse to call other people with whom you wanted to reconnect. You can call up someone you haven’t talked with for years and say, “Remember me. I know it’s been too long since we last talked. I was trying to track down Bev Binder and thought you might know how to reach her. But first, how have things been going for you since we last talked?”
In a recent posting, Reasons for Calling, I mentioned that having an adequate reason for calling is a challenge for most professionals just starting out to develop new business. Here is a readymade reason for calling lots of dormant contacts. Don’t let new technology seduce you away from taking advantage of it.
