Debbie Mayo-Smith: Lesson to learn from 200 men in drag

Priscilla Queen of the Desert. File photo

Come back with me to 2005. Persistence finally paid off.

After three long years of nudging, Julie the event organizer of the ECAQ Electrical Contractors Association of Queensland asked me to be one of the keynote speakers at the annual conference being held in Ayers Rock.

I arrived in time for the Gala dinner. Julie thought it would be fun for the evening to be themed Priscilla, Queen of the desert. 200 men, their partners and suppliers. All in drag. And ENJOYING the experience. Scary!

Noon the next day. Presentation over. One of the delegates came up to me and told me a story I'd like to share with you.

"Debbie, we had a large contract that was coming up in a few months, but in the interim we needed to take up the slack with work instead of laying off staff. Naturally we thought we'd go to our customers first and see if we could get some new business from them.

We initially thought we'd contact 1000 of them with the idea of offering a complimentary check of their external electrical connection. Afraid of wasting our money on such a large mailing, we began with a trial of 100 letters.

From those 100 we got 80 appointments! In fact we got so much work and were so flat out from that first mail out we were thanking our lucky stars we didn't send the original 1000 planned!"

I know what you're thinking. "Nice story Debbie. But I'm not a tradesperson. What's this got to do with me?

What is your answer to these three questions?

1. How detailed is your 'marketing' database? I didn't say customer database because you should be thinking on a larger scale. Customers. Prospects. (depending on your business)

2. How closely can you target? (relevance to them - not you) How fast can you move when customer service or sales opportunities arise?

3. How often do you use your database to add value to your service AND bring in $$$?

* Written by international speaker and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith. For more tips, over 500 how-to articles visit Debbie's article webpage.