- Educate customers how to better use your product or service. If you help them get the most out of working with you, they will be more successful and more likely to recommend you to others.

- Introduce them to a new resource you found helpful. By the way, could you see an opportunity for making this recommendation a strategic alliance?

- Invite customers and prospects to a special event and tell them to bring a friend or business associate. It doesn’t even have to be your event. Are you planning on going to a workshop with a great speaker? Why not bring along a few clients and prospects?

- Make current customers aware of exclusive offers available only to them. Hey, they pay your bills, why not put something special for them once in a while.

- Remind them about attending an event. Yep, sometimes inviting people is not enough. So call to refresh their memory – they will thank you for it.

- Use your call in conjunction with other marketing tools to build anticipation. For example you could make a call to announce that a special mailer will be arriving in the mail-box and email-box thus increasing your chances of your written marketing message actually being noticed…

I’m sure you are now asking: “couldn’t I just use email to do all of that”? You certainly could, but… If you relay on email alone you lose a very person aspect of using your voice. Plus, with a click of a button – puff – and your email is gone! Your call has a higher chance of making it through.

Which brings me to my last point…

Top Tip #3 - Use technology to automate your calls.

Yes, I’m talking about pre-recorded messages – like the ones that interrupt your dinner. Well, actually not quite like that… Before you rush to judgment that this stuff doesn’t work, let me explain a couple of reasons why it does work.

Unlike those annoying calls from strangers pitching new credit cards or better mortgage rates I’m suggesting to leave messages for people you have already done business with in the past or who specifically requested you send them more information. That’s a big difference!