In sales networking, contact vitality depends on finding ways to stay in touch.  For the first 25 years of my career, I would spend each Sunday night doing what I call Spin-to-Win.  I’d flip through my Rolodex.  I’d study all the little handwritten scribbles:

  • Screen shot 2013-10-21 at 10.14.51 AMHow is the daughter of Client X doing in her first year away at college?
  • How did the disk surgery fate for the wife of Client Y?
  • Say, that Homecoming win must have brightened the day of Client Z, proud alumnus of Pandemonium State!

Never force this information to top billing in a phone call.  Let it surface casually after you’ve broached a business issue.  Sound contrived? If you’re in sales, you better really love people.  Your human concern should naturally bubble up. Whose memory doesn’t need a bump or a nudge?  This process just gives your tracking system reliability.

When I sold Swim with Sharks to my publisher and launched my writing career, you know what was the cornerstone of my pitch?  Fifty-two pounds of Rolodexes I schlepped into the meeting room in suitcases! I showed the publisher the entires and the detailed notes.  I proved I was in command of the sales support network that would help launch in my book.

Today  Spin-to-Win is swipe and swoosh with the latest iPhone app.  You build an entire library of data, and it still won’t weigh more than 3.95 ounces.  The Under-App, the app that makes it all happen, is one you need to implant in your head: the determination to put a fresh face on the details of the people in your sales life at the start of each and every business week.

About the author Harvey Mackay

Seven-time, New York Times best-selling author of "Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive," with two books among the top 15 inspirational business books of all time, according to the New York Times. He is one of America’s most popular and entertaining business speakers, and currently serves as Chairman at the MackayMitchell Envelope Company, one of the nation’s major envelope manufacturers, producing 25 million envelopes a day.

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