Holiday Connecting - Have You Planned it Out?

What a fantastic time of the year to catch up with those you didn't during the rest of the year. People are more forgiving as we near the holiday season - and many times, just making a connection can cause some business to happen. Someone reached out to me on Facebook recently and it reminded me that I needed to order something from them. Fortunately they didn't reach out to me to sell me anything - it was just the fact that I saw their photo and saw them - and BAM... I knew I wanted to purchase something and it was on my list. They made it more personalized by contacting me - even though they didn't realize I was already thinking of them and needed to be pushed a bit.

Simple ideas if you are in North America: go to Costco and order photo cards online. You can drop in your logo and any photo or two; then within 24 hours, visit your closest Costco and your new holiday cards are ready. By ordering 50 at a time, you are looking at a very small charge to sent out cards to your customers, prospective customers, and strategic partners.

There are nicer personalized holiday cards you can create, but I find these to be great. If you know of a specific site for me to recommend, please send me a note through AllBusiness or at my ScoreMoreSales site.

Many people use Send Out Cards. I signed up for them and never took advantage of them - so I can't recommend personally, but others swear by them.

Just make sure you put it in the calendar when you will be getting these messages out to those who support your business. You need to thank them and remember them. If you don't do it, someone else will.... and you may lose them as a contact or customer. Why take the chance?

Lori Richardson blogs on taking sales action. She writes for D&B at AllBusiness, and has two new books coming out soon.