Engagement Best Practices and Habits

It seems a day doesn’t pass where I don’t hear of some “expert” talking about engagement and some of the tools that they urge you to adopt in order to build engagement with people you know. 

To me, they’re most often coming up way short of the meaning of engagement and more likely selling a new tool or online solution that is trying to substitute their package for meaningful relationship building. 

Don’t be fooled nor distracted from what you’re called to be doing. The key is to develop consistent, every other week active contact with a few key people in order to create a strong bidirectional relationship where you can collaborate, support and give and get trusted referrals. 

I’ve tried a lot of “devices” in CRM’s, online tools, and social media utilities that may allow one to mass produce making contact and keep track even of that contact… but that’s not going to meet the requirements.

To be effective in engagement, you must get to know me, learn what I’m interested in and then connect and relate to me about those things… on a regular, recurring time schedule. When you do, :magic” happens for you in most cases.

So here are a few standards to adopt as you continue reaching out to your “A-list”

• maintain the every other week frequency in reaching out
• always add an item-of-value to an outreach that is relevant to each individual’s interests
• vary the way you reach from the previous way you used
• keep it personal and relational
• always be seeking ways you can bring something unusually valuable to each person like an introduction, referral or even a solution to a need.

Habits and tools to help. Your objective should be to turn this new set of learned activities into new habits for yourself and ultimately it will become a lifestyle and you’ll become known for being an influencer and a “giver.” These habits are like having an investment that is growing in value each month as you see the compounding effect it has on the strength of your relationships. 

So here are a few goals or habits to build:

• OK, you know the “every other week” routine… so you must keep track and also record each interaction. Start out simple with a scoreboard or tracking sheet as was provided. You can add your own CRM tool and I can introduce you to tools that can make engagement and tracking very easy to maintain.
• Schedule a daily “ping time” as I call it. If you set aside a specific time in your daily calendar, every day… soon you’ll see this reaching out to contact becomes natural and reaffirming as you complete each day’s tasks.
• Surround yourself with reminders. Whatever works to help you pay attention to the tasks to be done should be considered. As an example, I like to send out handwritten notes… so I keep a box of them clearly in sight to nudge my thinking to use them. Maybe for you having a roll or sheet of postage stamps sitting on your desk could do the trick. 
• My VIP library files also represents a set of shareable assets at the ready when I need something to send to someone that may be interesting. I’ve a library with hundreds of valuable tools and resources collected over years of looking for good resources. I don’t worry if. I have a need now for something. Instead, where I see a valuable article, lead magnet or online resource, I simply save it to my library so it’s available for future use.  I have timeless articles from the ’50’s that were shared with me decades ago that I’ll constantly draw upon today to share today with important people.

Remember, all of these efforts are to get you standing out from the crowd and above the noise that is so loud in all of our lives.  Focusing a little time to make effective “keeping-in-touch” turn into habits and “autopilot” behavior will pay dividends beyond any other means. Avoid relying on social media where you’ll simply disappear in the crowd and noise… and be ignored. Build the habits that make you the person anyone would want to be in a relationship with and your benefits will multiply.