Relationships feed the sales funnel
October 2, 2014
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reminded twice that the networking and partnership techniques taught at Shred School are both valid and valuable when marketing secure destruction services.
Last month I spoke at a large convention of businesses that provide assistance to senior citizens who need varying degrees of care. They help prepare meals, pay bills, get groceries, etc. From everything I saw, it appears to be a thriving business with lots of growth possibilities.
During my presentation about the risks and liabilities related to having access to their clients’ personal information, I asked whether they ever had occasion to help their elderly clients get rid of personal records. As I suspected, they often did. Often, they reported their clients had a lifetime of records in the basement or garage from moving to a retirement community or cleaning house. As such, they made arrangements for destruction.
After that presentation, I wondered how many NAID members sought out these service providers in their market to develop business relationships of some sort. Admittedly, such a relationship is not going to make or break any destruction service, but every little bit helps.
Then, recently, we learned of yet another incident of records being found abandoned at a self-storage facility. In this case, it happened to be medical records. Self-storage companies are another group of businesses with which NAID members can form mutually beneficial relationships. Their units are full of business records and whether it is destroying abandoned records when they get stuck with them or helping their tenants destroy old records, there is money to be made.
At Shred School, we spend a lot of time on these types of practical, real-world tactics. In one session, we provide a list of more than two dozen categories of companies and people from who qualified leads can readily flow. If these relationships are successfully pursued, the resulting number of leads they generate will feed growth for years without ever making a cold call.
It is the kind of stuff that doesn’t mean all that much individually but, when combined, makes all the difference in the world to your bottom line.