Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Capture And Organize Your Contacts

When you're building this mailing list, you want to collect more information than you think you're going to need, because you're going to spend a lot of time doing a lot of research and you might as well capture it well you're on their website or doing your homework so some things to consider on we'll talk about howto howto capture where to store these contacts in a minute, but you want to make sure you captured the store's name um, the buyer's name. Sometimes the buyer could be the owner of the store, like in julie's case, julian, her sister teresa own sweet paper, and so they both do buying so you'd want to address it to both or one of them, they merrily their mailing address. If you ever do any, you know direct mail pieces, you'll want that mailing address and email address oftentimes to you, khun do a little sleuthing online, and even they might have a generic info at if you can't find the name of the specific buyers. If their specific email you know things like there you are all t...

heir phone number, their fax number, and then I always like to have a section for follow up notes and sales notes. Follow preferences, things like that. So as I start to reach out to these people, I'm going to learn more things about their shop. I'm going to learn more things about how they like to be contacted, and so I want to document that so I can reflect on it later and helped to really tear my our focus and hone in on my contact. So something I like to do is call it is prioritized this mailing list. Once I've got this thing in this list in place, this is just my own personal way of prioritizing let's pray like to categorize everybody so people that I would categorize a's in my in my list are high priority buyers, or they're members of the press there basically like the higher tier vips, contacts, or so br my current account, so there also be a peace, too, but there kind of falling under a separate category because the message I'm going to send to my current contacts is going to be slightly different than I'm going to send two prospects that are not currently buying from me, but so I'd like to keep that a little bit separate, they're all on the same mailing list, but again, I just like to have a column that that prioritizes it see, in my case, are lower priority buyers, they're kind of dead leads people that may have petered out told me no, whatever it is, but I like to keep a record of the fact that I reached out to them and what the results were andy, for me, especially when I go to trade shows and I'm meeting a lot of people there there, my industry contacts there, vendors, they're people that I am associated with in my business, but they're not necessarily targets for my wholesale sales. Um, so this may seem a little like o c d, but it does really help when you're tearing your outreach and determining who descend what teo, because, again, it will help you determine what value you can bring teach of them, because the messaging is going to be different for each of these categories, and frankly, you know, the d category there, the industry contacts and vendors, you're not going to be sending them all your marketing stuff. They're more just context that you haven't you want to capture so quality over quantity, I say this a lot. I talk about this law in all aspects of wholesale, but in regards to your mailing list, a small but tailored list is going to yield you way better results, so much more results than ah huge list would be, so I always encourage people to really start from a fresh slate and build your own mailing list, I never want to encourage people to buy a list, whether you know trade shows, sell list or you can go online and there's different, you know, advertising tools to help you find the right list, whatever don't do that it's a waste your time and money because you're still going to have to vet the's contacts and make sure that they're the right fit for you is better to start with a clean slate and slowly add people to your list as you discover them. And as you learn that they're the right fit for you. So care you already have your mailing listening. Tiffany, I know you have one. So how too many tell us how many people are on your million list right now? I have while minds not section out like yours, but total maybe like under three hundred. Ok? And you didn't start with three hundred, right? Like you built up to that and it kind of added as you did a trade show and you added as you have so so where do you think he started when you first built it? Um, I started with seventy five, ok, of, like, my dream. Dreams doors I guess good way just added more and more that's perfect and I want people to start with their dreams stores you know your dream stores are the ones I want you to reach for and try to, you know, work with and if you do in the process of your research find out that they are not a fit for you or if you reach out to them and they say no that's okay, no harm, no foul right care? I know you've done a lot of work on your mailing list in the last year or so, like when you first started how many did you just how many did you have had one hundred on guy that was in preparation for a mailer I sent before the stationary show. Okay, um and since then I worked up to three fifty pretty click and I've operated with that but then just recently added another bunch and um I found it was helpful teo and did end up outsourcing the data entry and I just sort of tag stuff I liked and he went there and had someone e j I did have someone help me put in just create the spreadsheet because look, you know, cut and paste cutting pace for hours and hours and hours there's other things I wanted to do with my time so absolutely um so yeah and they also helped help me find the bayern the buyer's name because sometimes, um and you know, I'm sure we've all done this. If it's not listed on the website, you can sometimes find it by just googling the store, maybe there's a block post down about the store and then the buyer's name is mentioned, but getting that buyer's name is really important to me because it allows for more personal, absolutely outreach, and but it but it is it is the definitely the more time consuming step in the data, right? You brought up a really good point that I'd actually like to just discuss amongst the audience, and if anyone online wants to chime in there's a lot of challenges and kind of getting that buyer name, sometimes I think that's probably the hardest is this puzzle to figure out sometimes it's very obvious and it's on their site. But not all the time, especially as the stores get larger, it becomes a little more difficult to determine who that buying authority is at the store. So christie, you've been working on your mailing list to what what challenges have you seen with regards to doing some of this research and kind of capturing the context? Yeah, I actually really like yelp because a lot of peace stores that I focus on are smaller, and they have a really dedicated shoppers that just come really often and the often right, like, oh, you know, this is that I really love this store owner, and usually they're small distort our is the buyer, so I found that really helpful and also facebook pages if you cook on there about in their contact that usually have a name there and that's usually again with the small stores that's usually the buyer, so I found that to be really helpful, excellent. Is anyone coming in online about the challenges are question is not about locating the which bar who the virus, you know, he did the buyer or even just a general question. Oh, you have a comment about, so if you're starting from scratch yet, what is place to look, I just curious of my own retail that my customers I sell directly to what I take a look at, just that data where they bought if it's online, what cities where they had that great starting and then start diving down into those cities in those stores? Yeah, I mean that right there, if you have great data about who your retail clients are, you can really you will be able to see some geographic trends, right? If you've been doing that for a while, that's, great that's a great idea to start there, you could do yelp and facebook searches you know, the other thing I've seen some lines do with great successes they've surveyed their retail clients and saying, which stores do you like like which stories you go shopping and basically and so that kind of, you know, and maybe they didn't give away surrounding it? Maybe they did. On social media, there was some incentive for these retail customers tio right back and express their favorites, but yeah, I mean, you're really what I really want to emphasize here is that your mailing list is going to ebb and flow it's going to be a constantly evolving product, our project and you're going to be adding new names and, you know, is buyer buyer moves on to another store, fish store shuts down, you're going to be removing that lee so it is going to increasing it's gonna happen flow basically so um oh, yeah, that and there was a question more, yeah, but the question was, do you call to get the name of the buyer of the store? You can? I think if you've searched high and low online and are coming up empty, I think that should be a last resort simply because it's julie stated retailers are busy, they don't really have much time, I mean, frankly, they might not be the one picking up the phone when you do call so it might just be, you know, a shot person, the answers, and they may tell you readily, but they've also might be a little more guarded with that information and not want to give it out. I think it's an option, but it wouldn't be my first option. Yeah, and if they're few comments now, candy from paris is when the store is small. I look at the business business registry. Yeah, usually the buyer is also the owner and tic tac press says sometimes I just have to call the store in ask the buyer name when scaring the when scaring the email has failed. Yeah, I agree again. If you've exhausted all options you've and not even e mailing them first, I mean checking on social media, look at there, look at their social media handles and see who's listed kirstie robber great idea of looking at their facebook page if it is a small boutique, I completely agree with that one online user that it's the buyers typically also the owner, so you can leverage that, you know, a phone calls not terrible. I didn't mean to dismiss it, but I do think it should be kind of the more last resort.