Are You On Your Customer's "Favorite's" List?

Here's a challenge. Can you answer the following questions about your customers? 

What's their favorite interest? Sport? Sports team? Charity and/or cause? What's important to them? When’s their birthday? Work Anniversary? Work goals? Have they or their company recently won an award?

Customers are humans. Not just people that buy from you.
People buy from people they like. Find a common interest with your customer. 

Here's a great way to know your customer better. 

Do Intensive Personal Research or "IPR" as I like to call it. I'm not talking about going through someone's trash or camping out in front of their house (that's creepy and not to mention illegal).  I am referring to going the extra mile to learn about your customer and add a personal touch here and there to build a stronger, more personable relationship.  After all, the best way to get to know someone is to learn about them. 

1)  Setup a Google alert for the company name and name of main contact.  This will push alerts to you when they are in the news.

2)  Connect on LinkedIn and see if you have common groups of interest.  Check what LinkedIn groups they belong to.

3)  Follow them on Twitter.  (Not Facebook or Instagram ~ too personal and again it would be creepy) - Do you have similar interests?  Do you both tweet about running marathons or the latest book you read?  

If you see something interesting send a quick, personal note to your customer. Make this a new daily or weekly habit.

Now it's your turn. Take the challenge. And remember - be authentic. And most of all don't be creepy!