If you’ve been following the Marketing Minute, you likely know that in my spare time I’m the Senior Account Manager with Odell Advertising/Marketing, Inc. “Senior Account Manager” is a fancy way of saying I’m a suit … a sales guy … a rainmaker. Although I still keep my fingers in the creative end of things, a big part of my job is getting new business. And, I’m happy to report, I’m rather pleased at the way things have been going.

As you might have guessed, one of the first things I did when I started with the firm was getting in touch with my existing Tortorella Design clients to let them know what was up. That was an easy inflow of “new” clients for Odell. If you keep your clients happy, attend to their needs and do good work, they’ll usually follow you wherever you go.

Next, I started contacting clients I hadn’t worked with in a while. Several of them came onboard the Odell ship, as well. But I didn’t hear back from one.

In the day, I had done quite a bit of work for this client – ads, trade show stuff, brochures, identity design and such. I got along with my main contact quite well and he seemed pretty happy. I was concerned why he hadn’t emailed me back. The last we had talked, a few years earlier, things weren’t gong so well for the company and they didn’t have any dough to spend on marketing. That’s kind of a bad idea, but that’s another post.

I could have stopped there and given up the [contact] ghost. Lots of designers do. I could have figured that he just wasn’t interested, they were using another shop, yada, yada, yada.

After emailing him twice, I picked up the phone. “Hi, this is Neil with Odell Advertising in North Canton. Is Joe Contact available?” “Sorry, Joe’s not with the company anymore.” Ah ha!, me thinks. “Who would be the person to speak with about your marketing and promotion?” “That would be Jack Deep-Pockets. He’s not in right now. Would you like his voice mail?” “Thanks. That would be great.”

So, I left a voicemail telling him who I was. A few years back, they renamed the company to be one of their main product names. I had done the logo for the product. I figured this was a good angle. “Hi Jack, this is Neil Tortorella with Odell Advertising up in North Canton. I’m the guy who designed your company logo several years back. I’d like to talk with you about your marketing and promotion plans for the remainder of 2007 and into 2008. You can reach me at …”

And that was that.

Our office opens at 8:30 AM. I tend to get there around 7:15 - 7:30 AM. Okay … I’m an overachiever. So sue me. The next morning around 7:30, the phone rings. It’s the president of the company I had called the day before. It seems they’d been looking for me, but when my previous contact left, so did my contact info. We set up a meeting.

Since then, this client has turned into, arguably, my biggest client at Odell. We’re doing trade show displays and support materials, ads all over the place, photo shoots, etc. Today they emailed needing us to design a system of product logos. Cha ching!

And all this is a result of simply keeping in touch.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt