Brett: Networking is the key to any successful business. I can't stress that enough, I mean it’s definitely helped us over the years. Whether meeting people in the streets, in a restaurant in a trade show, you never could tell where your next leads going to come from. Where your next job is coming from.
Diane: Everything starts with relationships. Every business have relationships. And if you don’t put a face with the person or you don’t talk to them on the phone or just something. I mean, all of our clients here at fromglobaltoyou.com are our friends. They’re friends. And eBay promotes, like we promote, people are generally good. It’s great to go out to eBay live and meet people and shake their hand and talk to them. Find out what they’re about or what they want, how they feel, what it is they need. It just makes my job easier.
Chris: I network a lot. I’m a CEO. And CEOs in Silicon Valley network a lot. And so I go to a lot of conferences and parties and things like that. And you can ask just about anybody in the valley and they’ll tell you that I wear this red SmugMug hat everywhere I go.
The fact that I’m reasonably tall and have a red SmugMug hat on at all times just makes me very easy to single out in a crowd. So, even if it’s a semi formal or formal party, I got my hat on just so people know who I am and where they can find me. Every chance I get, I’m flying in an airplane or something. I always wear a SmugMug t-shirts and stuff. So that when I’m sitting around in an airport, people can come up to me and chat, which happens fairly regular these days. And so I get to meet our customers out on the street or in the airport or whatever and get some feedback and meet new people network and everything.
Kimberly: We got a data base for thousands of people who have visited Tranquil Space. And we sent out a monthly news letter. Discreet, it’s about 13, 14 pages that has all the updates. Everything that’s going on, people who’ve sent in photos of them wearing Tranquil Space t-shirts in front of the Taj Majal or while snorkeling. All sorts of great stuff.
I think the news letter helps keep you in their eye and also helps keep you connected. Because we have, like I said, with t-shirts. And then we also have the piece on community celebration where you say you bought a house and we know about it or you got married and we know about it or you have a baby and we know about it. We honor you. And who doesn’t like to see their name in print, right.
And this newsletter goes to 4,500 people. On average I’d say only 40 percent of people actually open the newsletter and I think that’s standard across the board with online newsletters. But I think it’s a very important piece just to help the students stay abreast of what’s going on and for us to stay in contact with them.
The whole reason I started inviting people into my living room with the practice of yoga, I wanted to create a community. I wanted to make like mine to people in Washington DC. As a paralegal, I was only meeting other paralegals in the law firm. It wasn’t quite the community I was seeking.
Ann-Marie: We have a website. We have a blog. And we used several online social media tools and they’re all connected. So this strategy, this social media and communication strategy is actually been helpful for us. So I’ll post something that I’m providing a workshop on social media in engaging donors and constituents in online social networking site. And within seconds, I will get people replying in my network, replying to my post saying, wow, that’s really great. Ann-Marie, got to give me a call and I’m interested on hearing more about that. And that happens almost every time I post something about some of our consulting services that we provide that resonates or strikes a note with some of our clients who are actually are in my network or prospects. Some of the prospects are in my network. And almost immediately I hear from them.
David: I’m not real big into computers myself, but I know that that’s one area where many people are looking on line for whatever services they want. And so when Cambridge has that capability to spread the word, to make it available for people that are searching for someone. That either are looking for a physician in general or they’re looking for someone in their area that can treat a certain problem. Now they’re able to find that or they will be able to find that through Cambridge which I could not provide otherwise.
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