Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube – for small business owners, it can be hard to keep up with all the latest digital sales and marketing aids.
But business owners focused on social media and other online trends may be overlooking a much more powerful marketing medium, one that boosts sales, consumer and retailer loyalty, and provides valuable marketing feedback – good old-fashioned face-to-face meetings.
Experts on entrepreneurs and marketing say there is no substitute for personal contact when launching a small business, and many successful business owners agree. “Electronic communication will never replace the relationship-building that can take place with the eyeball-to-eyeball [exchange],” says Dr. Leslie Roberts, founder and president of GoForth Institute, a national “entrepreneur school” based in Calgary that provides resources, support and training to small businesses.
While Internet technology and social media such as Twitter and Facebook allow businesses to manage contacts and nurture important professional relationships, it’s the initial “handshake” that makes a lasting impression with retailers and consumers.
Independent business owner Chris Lumley certainly agrees. The 32-year-old president of a Toronto child car-seat company has made it his mission to personally meet the hundreds of retailers carrying his product, and the payoffs have been huge. So far he’s shook hands and conducted training sessions at three-quarters of the nearly 300 independent stores across Canada and the United States that sell his products – and reaped immediate higher sales.
In the first month after each round of visits for Clek Inc., especially those focused on product safety and training, sales of his ultramodern child safety seats skyrocket, doubling and sometimes tripling previous records at those retailers, he says. “That justifies the price [of the road trip],” says Mr. Lumley, who recently returned from a whirlwind trip to Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. “The true return on investment of [me visiting] … is that relationship we build with them because they like dealing with us, and me, as a company.
“In these smaller stores a lot of times the people on the floor are the owners and they only sell what they really believe in.”
Two decades ago, personal networking was the go-to business model. But when Internet marketing and social media burst on the scene 10 years ago, many people thought cyber networking could generate the same results as a leisurely sit-down business lunch, says GoForth’s Dr. Roberts, a former professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business and Mount Royal College.
“Now people are returning to the basics with handshaking and face-to-face,” she says. “There’s nothing like the connection that a president and founder of a company can make when meeting the consumer.”
In fact, in-person interactions are the “single most powerful marketing medium,” says Dr. Alan Middleton, an assistant marketing professor and executive director of York University’s Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC) in Toronto.
“Research in the business-to-business world suggests the No. 1 reason for selection of a supplier is the personality of the sales team or seller. This is above the technical specs, marketing form, anything else,” Dr. Middleton says. Furthermore, long-term, repeat business is much more likely to result when consumers feel as if they have a personal relationship with the boss.
One micro-business - companies with fewer than five employees - that owes its success to traditional pavement-pounding is Los Cabos Drumsticks, a Fredericton drumstick manufacturer started in 2005 by husband-and-wife team Larry and Gillian Guay, both 57, after their custom furniture business bottomed out.
For the Guays, both 57, the immediate challenge was how to get their product into retail stores without any insider contacts to set the wheels in motion.
