Do Your Customers Really Know Your Services?
I had visitors today from a company that I have been doing business with for years. The purchasing agent for this company has been to our facility many times but his boss and a couple of other support staff, had never been to our company. I got the opportunity to show them around and explain the various departments. Essentially we are running 3 business in one..graphic design, printing and mailing. Even though we had done business for years they were still surprised at all of the things that we do.
Sometimes after we have been in business for a number of years that we get lulled into believing that most people know who we are and what we do. Our business name is Burns Mailing & Printing but I don’t know how many times we have been doing a printing project and the customer ask, “you do mailing too”? The same with mailing, some are suprised that we do printing as well. We cannot afford to make that assumption. Every sales person has had the experience of working with a customer and one day calls that customer’s company to find that the person they have been doing business with is no longer employed there and the new person has no idea who you are and what your company does. Back to square one in building that relationship with another buyer.
How do I keep my business in front of the most people? Direct mail of course. Unlike television, radio and some social media, the recipient of a direct mail can lay the information aside and look at it later when they have time or in my case I may save it until I have a need and then I have a resource for the service or product that I anticipate buying. One of the things I love about advertising with direct mail is that it is measurable. When I mail out a new post card and we have phone calls telling us they got our card, I know that my direct mail campaign is working.
On a personal note, my Grand Daughter (age 2 1/2) is going to be coming from Nashville today to visit with us for a few days. Of course, we are always thrilled to see her. We have been using Skype to keep in touch with her for a couple of weeks now and that is the next best thing to her actually being here. I love technology!
