Keep in touch! You say it. You hear it. But do you MEAN it? Keeping in touch with your clients and prospects is the lifeblood for new sales and new recruits. You simply never know when your prospect or existing client is in the mood to buy the product or service you are offering. Creating and maintaining an email list of prospects is an essential component for success in today's marketplace.

If nothing else is certain in life, CHANGE is. Every day people get married or divorced. They find out about new grandkids or maybe they got a raise yesterday. Think about how many times your situation changed in your own life. Think about how you heard about a great deal and did not act on it immediately. Think about how you finally did take action on the concept. You just never know when that magic moment of decision will come about, do you?

This concept readily applies to people who depend on recruiting for their direct sales business. You must keep your name in front of your prospects on a regular basis or the prospect may not remember you or your contact information when the time is right. People often wake up one morning with the decision to make additional money. Who are they going to turn to for assistance? They might call you, but only if they know how to get in touch with you quickly.

Let's say you made contact on the internet with someone about your business. (You do prospect on the internet, right?) You spent 15 minutes on the phone with the prospect. She politely backed off and said "I'll get in touch with you!" There are many reasons why a person will not make a commitment at that particular moment. So what do you do? Do you throw her name away? Not a good idea. Too many people just toss that name in the circular file.

Hopefully you obtained his or her email in your conversation. "Bridget, can I please have your email so I can let you know whenever there are some big promotions and discounts from my company?" Getting the email address is probably the most important result of your contact call. Chances are that most people will NOT sign up with you on the first or second call. Why should they? You are an unknown quantity to them. Your company is still a stranger to them.

Build up your prospect list and collect their email addresses. Email them at least once a month - or more if you have some really exciting news to impart. Always put a note in your email that they can stop getting email from you by just letting you know. Remind them at the beginning why you are emailing them. "We talked about my company in January and I told you I would get back to you." Make that standard procedure and you should not have problems with people saying you are spamming them. Better yet, use the phone!

If you are afraid of the phone you have two options in business: 1) get over it; 2) find another line of work. It's as simple as that, folks.

I don't recommend using email only as your means of contact, but it sure is a good start. Be sure to add regular postal mailing to your prospecting techniques as well.

Keep these prospecting ideas in mind:

1. Call two prospects on the phone each day. Don't skip any days except Sundays. In fact, I used to make my insurance prospecting calls on Sundays because I knew they would be home. Only a few would get angry and some of those became my clients. "Oh, I'm sorry to bother you today. Would tomorrow be a better day to call?"

2. Make sure you get to know your prospects. How many kids do they have? What do their spouses do for work? Where did they go to school. Remember, people like to buy stuff from their friends, not strangers.

3. Remember that you usually must make more than one contact to get them to remember who you are. People get calls every day from all sorts of places. Why should they immediately remember you? Give them a reason to remember you. You might say, "I'm the person who called you about the $10 special on pots and pans last month."

So, get those valuable email addresses and add them to your prospecting list. Then send out an email regularly to your prospects. Make your prospecting a habit. Think about how you can do that every day and one day you will find you succeeded!