Is your company the first one that comes to mind when one of your customers or prospects is ready to buy? Will your community make the short list when a business is searching for a site to expand or relocate to in your region?

Are you doing enough to keep your organization on the radar of its existing and potential customers? Being Visible gets you on their lists, but Communicating with them is what keeps you top of mind.

Stay in touch to stay on top. Communicate regularly with your contacts to create and maintain top-of-mind awareness for your offering. Electronic newsletters that provide relevant, useful information are an effective communicating tool. Use them to stay in touch … to teach and to tell … not to sell.

We all know that it can cost up to 10 times more to go after a new customer than it does to obtain additional business from an existing account. Yet too often we focus on prospecting and selling to strangers, instead of communicating with the people who already know us: our customers and contacts.

Regardless of who you are or what you have to offer, you have to earn your customers’ business every day. Staying in touch with them — and on top of their needs — is critical to providing the best product and service experience possible. …. Lori .