An Article By Steve Waterhouse

I’m losing touch quickly…

A recent study* showed that IMing or Instant Messaging is now five times more popular with young people than E-Mail! Man am I out of it. I was one of the first to use E-mail back when it was a secret military communications tool. Now I risk being out of touch with my own kids.

My son won’t contact his friends unless they are ‘online’ so he can IM them. He wouldn’t think of calling them or E-mailing them like us ‘old farts’ do. I used to think he was just a hi-tech geek but now I know that he is part of a real trend.

What does that mean to those of us in sales? Change!

Do you remember when everyone had to get a fax machine and a separate fax number? Just like faxes replaced letters and email replaced faxes, IM is likely to continue to gain in popularity. If you want to connect with the most powerful group of consumers on the planet, it’s time to get an IM account.

Communicate like the client.

Those of you who have been through my Total Customer Selling™ program know that I talk a lot about communicating with your client in their style, not yours. IM is just one more variable in that mix. If our customers want to communicate with us through IM, we should make it easy for them.

It’s time to put my actions where my mouth is. As of today, my IM (AIM:teamselling) is now posted on my “Contacts” page at www.waterhousegroup.com. I guess I’ll have to put it on my business cards next. I think I can use it to replace that fax number that never gets used!

Now it’s your turn. Set up your IM and tell your clients. Then let me know how it works for you. If you let me, I’ll share the results on my web site.

Steve
Waterhouse

Steve Waterhouse is Principal
and Founder of Waterhouse Group (www.waterhousegroup.com), a
sales consulting and training company that helps companies
dramatically increase their sales. He can be reached at
1-800-57-LEARN orinfo@waterhousegroup.com.

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