Yesterday I was reminded of a client I worked with some ten years ago, who needed to bring in more business.  I will call him Benchly, because the name just came to me and I like it. 

Benchly’s business was off, and the younger members of his practice weren’t fully utilized.  Unassigned talent creates a serious cash drain on a firm, so he was in a hurry to find a client.  In his late 50’s, Benchly had practiced his profession for a quarter century.  He had met a lot of people over those twenty plus years. But, he believed many of them were now retired. Like most of us, he had let many of the relationships lapse. 

Still, not all of them could be retired. Rekindling those old relationships was likely to be a faster route to finding business than starting with new ones, so I suggested he start there.

“What could I possibly have to say to someone I haven’t spoken with for ten years?” he asked.  We talked about how to approach these old contacts, and over the next few weeks, he called them.  Only one of them resulted in any new business.  Benchly billed $16 million to that client’s company over the next twelve months.

I was reminded of Benchly because I was recommending a similar effort to another client, in this case a recruiter.  Much younger than Benchly, he nevertheless had let relationships with some potentially valuable contacts go cold.

“What could I possibly have to say to someone I haven’t spoken to in so many years?” he asked.  We talked, and he went off to make some calls.  Half an hour later he was back, having scheduled a meeting with a former boss he hadn’t talked to for nine years.  He had spent the half hour on the phone catching up with the former boss, who wanted to talk to him about a search.

So, what can you possibly have to say to someone you haven’t talked to in so many years?  This is what I recommend:

• Write each cold contact’s name on a piece of paper.  Finding a reason to call them will be much less daunting in the concrete than in the abstract.
• Review the following reasons for calling and see if you can adapt one of them to each person:
  o        Something reminded me of you.
  o        I need your advice.
  o        There is something you should know.
  o        How are the results of our past work for you?
• Focus on them, not on you and definitely not on your need for business.  If you aren’t sincerely interested in them, you shouldn’t call in the first place.  This should be a case of networking making you a better friend (a subject for another day), rather than an indirect means of putting the touch on someone.
• Have a concise, clear elevator speech prepared so you can respond to the inevitable question about what you are doing now.
• Don’t rush things.  You have to earn the right to talk about more business and that may take months.  Of course, if the contact asks you for help, you can respond immediately.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 8:03 am and is filed under Contact List, Networking, Phone Calls. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.