So I was at a Philanthropy lunch today with one of my favorite people, Tammy Leventis of Mail Marketing. On the way over I was telling her to hold on to her hat because we were gearing up to help even more people with the Thrive Program and she was going to be super busy (she provides the printing and mail services for our premier clients).
She was thinking that she should start sending something out too (you think?) BUT she did not have her people in a database. In addition to that she did not know what email program to use. I suggested a couple to her and she said that she would have to wait until she had her people in some kind of order.
SIGH
If this is your thought you will NEVER have everything ready in order to start. You will never take 3 days of your life to data-entry all your contacts into a program. You will never look up all the emails from all those business cards. You will never start!
So what should you do? Start with what you have! If you use Gmail or Outlook or many other programs, just by typing a letter you will get a list of people by that name that you can email to. When I am sending out “special” emails to my internet friends I use this method. When I am just trying to hit my personal contacts I use this method. The glorious part of it is that all those people are my friends! They never yell at me for sending them anything – sometimes they may delete me without looking at it – but they never scream spammer at me!
The next best thing is to start with an excel or database program (here is a good post to read – What Is A Small Business Database?). Enter 5 people every day. At first it will be easy because you will have a backlog of people, but soon you will have to actually TRY to find people to enter into it! Make it a game to figure out who should be in there – your doctor, vet, lawyer, hairdresser, the mailman, your family, friends, networking contacts, co-workers, even old flames!
Can I make a suggestion? Start with The Thrive Contact System even though you are not ready. Try it and see if you get more business – the majority of our clients do! Make enough money off the people that you DO have in it to hire someone to do your data entry. Stop figuring out why you can’t do lead generating and just start! TODAY!
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