What To Do With Your “Lukewarm” Contacts? by @MallaHaridat

Running a successful event business is not easy.  You are in the industry where you meet contacts all the time – the super hot leads that land into new customers/clients and the lukewarm contacts – the ones that you know you SHOULD follow up with but often forget after the first meeting. Not that I would be telling on myself! Lol. The luke warm contacts though are often very powerful in your long term strategy.  Keep them engaged and connected and they could turn into powerful allies or clients down the road. The challenge is juggling the day to day demands of your business while balancing this long term relationship building.

For the advanced networker, I recommend going straight to an email newsletter or blog.   Start sharing information on a bi-monthly or weekly basis to keep your friends, family and networks in the know about your events, your successes, challenges and news you want to share. But when you are first starting, keep it simple.  Here is one tip to get you started.

Email a LinkedIn contact

I’m sure most of you have a LinkedIn network.  But how many people have you emailed/messaged your network in the past month? Especially someone that you haven’t spoken to in the past six-nine months. I started doing this recently.  I made a commitment of contacting two people each month.  People that I haven’t heard from in the past year.  During this past month, one friend shared with me news about a new contract that she won.  We celebrated.  Another friend told me that her business had fallen on hard times and she was looking for work. We started brainstorming employment options, I reached out to someone in my network, and we both said some prayers to keep her positive. After doing this for a few months, I’ve moved up to reaching out to four or five contacts.  I keep the bones of your email for most of the people that I reach out to and customize only a few lines.   Keeps it personal yet also is not overwhelming for me. And yes, while I’m only staying connected with four people at a time in my network, I am taking the time to reach out to them individually.  That’s what networking is really all about.