After years of watch trading, I was looking to improve by finding a new way to reach out to more people. The biggest mistake I made early on in my watch trading career was not reaching out to my clients on a periodic basis to stay on top of their minds.
The more I think about it, the more I realized that I was missing out on opportunities. Whenever I talk to people about watches, no one gets upset. Nor has annoying gotten mad at me for offering to buy or pay them cash for their watches.
It’s just plain and stupid not to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This is taught in the Knight Watch Advanced training course. If you don’t know what a CRM is and/or how to best apply it to watch trading, I highly recommend checking it out. We
live in the digital age where anybody can increase their contact list by hundreds of people in a matter of minutes.
The process I use to keep adding more people to my CRM is straightforward. I identify a viable source which works for my situation, and just keep on adding contacts from that source. After doing this consistently over a period of time, I was surprised to find I have more than 1,000 contacts in my CRM!
With that said, here’s some pointers regarding how you can add hundreds of contacts to a CRM:
Sources:
- Business directories
I have been using LinkedIn for a while. I mostly used it when I had a financial services career as an advisor. LinkedIn is a fantastic tool to gather information about specific clients I like to work with. Currently, I have a mixture of local business owners, medical professionals, as well as financial professionals.
To collect, the emails from LinkedIn it’s super easy. Just follow these steps…
1.Click on “My Network”
2.Click on “My Connections”
3.Click on “Export contacts”
Using Facebook to fill my CRM is so simple. Same as LinkedIn, I can download the whole list of my friends. The challenging part is to select only the people I feel are the right fit for my client list.
It’s straightforward to add them to a CRM. When I add their name to the database, I also include a link to their profile. This lets me connect easily and consistently with them to follow-up. I go to their profile and comment on their pictures or posts to remind them I’m alive and that I’m the go-to watch guy. When someone comments on my posts, I like to go and see who the person is If I forgot. I assume people might do the same.
Go to Seetings->your Facebook information->Select Friends only-> Create File
Due to my history of emailing a lot, I have a long list of people I’ve connected with that way. Because I use LinkedIn, I can extract all my email contacts to the list with my LinkedIn email. I’ve read that there are other tools to extract the emails from your account as well but I’m not sure which those are.
If I were looking for a solution, I would start with a Google search to find the answer.
I am slowly building my Instagram following, but to be honest, I don’t focus on it as much. I have some great contacts on Instagram. And it’s very valuable to add them to the CRM list. All I have to do is DM (direct message) them or comment on their profile pictures to stay in touch. I don’t necessarily feel the need to comment about things watch related on their posts, because I know if they look on my profile, they will see that’s what I do. It may seem odd, but it’s an organic way to keep people knowing that I’m a watch trader without being aggressive or annoying.
Business Directories
This one is my favorite because these people get bombarded all the time by advertising companies. Still, I am quite positive that no one sends them an email to ask if they want to get cash for their watches or if they are interested in buying an excellent timepiece.
There are real estate directories, law firms directories medical professionals etc. If you just look around enough on the internet, or search industry publications there are endless opportunities to collect contacts and potential customers.
How To Build a Rapport
Over the years from my sales experience as well as selling watches, I’ve found people don’t mind learning new things. Especially if it benefits them directly, they are very open-minded to hearing you out.
There are many ways you can stay in touch with clients by leveraging free tools. What I found is to start slower. Why? Because I realized as I gathered over 1800 contacts that I could get banned from reaching out to too many people at once. So I am trying to protect you from having that happen. Some emails I gathered bounced, and other people are simply not interested.
So for example, I sent 200 emails out of 1800 to people I mostly know as the first wave. Then a different audience on the next wave.
I am planning to slowly introduce my watch trading business to more people until I can reach all 1800. And in the meantime, I will still be collecting more contacts for my CRM.
I know for a fact by leveraging the CRM system taught in the Knight Watch Course, I am moving my watches much faster, and I don’t have to depend on Facebook groups, marketplaces, or other places to sell for me.