First Key Habit of Highly Effective Marketing Services Professionals

Habit 1 Communication Procedures

5 Habits of Highly Effective Marketing Services Professionals may help those who are struggling to improve their job performance.

Habit 1: Communication Procedures
Without question, one of the most essential elements of any good relationship is clear and open communication. As a marketing services professional, practically everything that we do is communication in one sense or another.
With this in mind, it becomes evident why communication procedures are the most important skills for us to develop.

I have previously written regarding some positive ways to communicate with others. This article is well worth the reading. However this time, we’ll look at some procedures that can be set up that will facilitate greater communication.
The first step to more effective communication is to eliminate unnecessary informational inputs from your life. We have to do this first by getting organized. Since I’ve written about this before, I’ll summarize very briefly here:

How do we eliminate information?

Inbox – Have one place where all incoming physical information goes and process it no more than once a day.

Email – Do not leave emails in your inbox after you are finished with them. Email responses generally yield more emails, so be conservative with responses.

Trash Can – In most cases, when in doubt, throw it out.

Phone – Marketing folks can get bogged down with unimportant telephone calls. However, don’t dismiss calls from sales professionals out of hand. Consider the marketing person who told me she hated telemarketers. Did she think clients thought the same of her when she called trying to market the firm’s services, or does she view the business development team in the same light as telemarketers.
Highly effective people respect the work of other professionals and will take a call from someone with a service they might be able to use. The key is knowing when to end the conversation and how to tell the person their service is not needed at this time.

Another time waster with the phone are people in your network who call to chat without a specific business reason for the call. It is important to keep these conversations short. You can end the call with an agreement to meet sometime in the future to talk about business opportunities.

You have now been shown how to eliminate some of the communications overload. Remember, these tips do nothing to reduce the 4000 advertising messages you receive each day, but they are a start. Now what can you do to improve your communications methods?

1. Answer every important email Clients love knowing that their question is important to you. Even if it’s a rude email, be sure that you answer it in as peaceable way as you possibly can. I had an irate client who emailed me while I was at a convention. I happened to check my email that evening and responded immediately. I told her I was at a convention, but the person who could help was also at the convention. I subsequently had lunch with him the next day, we laughed about the problem, and solved it. I got back from the convention and had a lovely email from her telling me she knew I would solve it.

2. Return every important phone call How do you handle calls to and from clients? Are you in the habit of returning calls the same business day? What about colleagues, people in your network or vendors? I have put together a prioritized list (from my standpoint) of important people. The lower they are on the totem pole, the less necessary communication is with them. If they’re not on the list, communication is usually not vital. However, do not confuse vital with important. Vital might be the difference between winning and losing a client. However, important might be the one call that connects you to your next client. This is why time management and priorities are so important. Highly effective marketing services professionals have a system for handling phone calls. On the business development side they even have developed methods for handling voice mail when their reach potential clients.

3. Encourage communication How do you handle communication with your team? As marketing advocates we have to work successfully in a collaborative and interdisciplinary environment. The firm’s brand really depends upon the communication you receive from your team. If this isn’t part of your plan, you need to incorporate it soon.

4. Set up a blog I like the functionality of a blog. Make sure your firm’s experts are contributing and get the word out to all your clients, prospects, suspects and vendors. Have your experts and other team members tie it in with their alumni associations as well.