By David Reed, President of Remote Office Consulting, LLC 

 There is nothing as important as getting close to your customer.  Over the past year, there has been a trend in cutting back on business travel.  This has helped reduce expenses, but has created another problem.  Customers are complaining that they never see their sales representative or key contact anymore.  Technology has helped bridge the gap, but nothing will ever take the place of face to face contact. 

By creating a remote workforce, a representative of your company can visit your clients with minimal travel.  It has been my experience that spending time establishing the relationship with your client is not only rewarding through the building of friendships, but keeps you in touch with their needs and potential projects.

We all have great intentions to visit our clients on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, life gets in the way of best intentions!  Many of us plan to see a customer on a monthly or quarterly basis, and before we know it a year has gone by and we have only called once or twice.  It helps to have a relationship plan.

Not every customer needs, or even wants, the same level of contact.  Some customers, based on your level of business activity and their personality, may want you to visit them every month.  Others may be ok with a monthly call and a quarterly visit.  By using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system such as SalesForce.com, or a simple Excel spreadsheet, you can build a personalized contact plan for each of your customers.

Having a distributed workforce can have its advantages when you need to stay close to your customers.  To make this really work, you must also have a plan in place to keep your employees connected to the home office.  This will be the focus of the next issue.