The way we do business is changing. As consumers, we demand more from the companies we deal with, and as business owners we have to change our practices to satisfy those demands.

As an example, the time-honored sales process has evolved considerably over the past few decades. Salespeople (a proud profession, make no mistake) used to be able to spend all of their time trying to “close” a sale, and had a great deal of success by playing the numbers and shattering a customer’s objections with little regard for the way the customer felt about them. And so, salespeople got a bad reputation. To this day, most people can’t even say the word “salesman” without getting a bad taste in their mouth.

Indeed, things have changed. These days, smart salespeople know that a customer has options, and that they way that customer feels about the sales rep is as important as the product or service in question. The best salespeople work on making a good first impression, befriending you and eventually getting around to presenting the advantages and benefits (to you!) of what they’re selling. In fact, the “new way” of selling is so prevalent that any time you come up against someone employing the archaic high-pressure tactics of old, it is so off-putting that you head straight for their competition without a moment’s hesitation.

In the same way that sales has seen a lot of evolution, so has marketing. In the case of marketing though, things seem to veering off into several different directions at once. I’m referring to marketing in the broadest sense, including advertising, traditional and online methods. One common theme these days though, is that of relationship marketing.

To many of my faithful readers, this is old news. Many of the readers of this blog are solo-practitioners themselves, and already subscribe to the belief that being yourself, staying in touch and actually joining your community of customers and fans is the best practice. In case you’re visiting my blog for the first time, I can say that I am indeed one of these proponents of what I now call “Relationship Marketing.” I didn’t coin the term, nor do I plan to lay claim to it, but it’s a nice way of referring to the act of staying in touch with your customers and turning them into fans; a major part of the mission at Tell Ten Friends.

I have the stats to prove that I draw more site visitors with my blog posts than I do with the rest of my site content (the “sales-y stuff”) and almost everyday I meet a “newbie” to the idea of blogging that appreciates my candor and my personal approach to blogging, which happens to be one of the main ways I market myself and the services at Tell Ten Friends. (Catch that? Subtle, huh?)

Eight short months ago when I started blogging, I was just a fledgling online marketer, without any clear goals or direction (and a day job). Now, I blog for business’ sake, and I like to think that not much (about my methods at least) has changed. Sure, everyday I learn more about what I’m talking about, from the likes of Mack Collier, Ann Handley and the crew at Marketing Profs, Darren Barefoot (A fellow Vancouverite who I’d like to meet but haven’t had the pleasure as yet), Jeremy Pepper, Andrea Weckerle, Mike Sansone, David Meerman Scott, Tara Hunt and many, many others. (I’m a bit of an addict, so much so that a day or two away from Bloglines and I suffer withdrawals) Most of these folks blog as a way of promoting their business, either directly on indirectly, and even though the blogosphere grows by leaps and bounds daily, we are all still early adopters. In fact as Steve Rubel reports, just 5.8% of all Fortune 500 companies blog, and on the sliding scale, they are the more active ones.
As big a fan I am of blogging, it is far from the only way to maintain a relationship with your client base, and keep them coming back for more. The best way is to speak with them in person (and really listen!) and the methods get less and less effective as they get less personal, although any effort on this front is better than nothing. Example: A hand-written note has more value that a form letter; a personal email will have more impact than a mass newsletter (personalized though it may be) and so forth. Still, some of us enjoy very large client bases, and require the help of technology to interact with all of them.

That, Dear Friends, is why I started Tell Ten Friends. Because as the world of business gets ever more diluted with competition and choices for the consumer, businesses are going to have to do more to stay in touch and add value to their existing customers. With all of the technology available today, you simply need to add a few ounces of care and concern and maybe a few helpings of time, you have a recipe that will keep your customers happy, and maybe give them enough reason to tell ten friends.

Can you believe it? Things are about to return to normal for my schedule, but the last few weeks months have been hectic.

Not only have I not posted, but my subscriptions in Bloglines have gone mostly unread. I’ve only had time to comment on a select few blogs, and I feel completely out of touch. I let the Rocketboom fiasco come and go completely without comment, and that’s not like me at all!

Alas, I promise to return to full form in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime, all I can offer is some bonus links, one of which I found on digg. (Because I was being lazy and I needed something)

Bonus Link #1: Cool street art installations by Mark Jenkins. Way cool, and looks like a lot of work.

Bonus Link #2: Jason at Marketing is my Middle Name saw a CNBC anchor incorrectly quote movie statistics, citing Aquaman as the former-highest-opening-weekend-blockbuster, now eclipsed by Pirates II. This is funny, and it’s a major kudos to Entourage, which as I’ve said before is one of my favourite shows.

Well, today is the big day. The big “3-0,” as it were.

I don’t feel any older, but strangely I do feel much wiser. But maybe that’s just the grey hairs multiplying daily on my temples.

Anyway, the point of the post is not wax philosophic about reaching this much hyped but rather anti-climatic milestone. In fact, I just wanted to point out how easy technology has made it for people to keep in touch in this day and age.

Case in point: I had five emails saying happy birthday waiting in my inbox this morning before I even rolled out of bed (It is a bit harder now that I’m older, after all) and they’re still rolling in. That’s not counting the dozen or so well-wishes from friends on Myspace, or the auto-responders from all of the various online groups I belong to (The BMW forums saw fit to wish me a happy one, for instance, and the birthday reminder calendar I subscribed to wouldn’t make the mistake of letting today come and go without a form-letter of acknowledgement).

So I guess my point is, if total strangers are capable of using some simple technology to wish me a happy birthday, (and I appreciate it, I really do) then how are YOU leveraging technology to stay in touch with your customers?

Feel free to leave me a happy birthday message in the comments. It make the whole impact of getting older that much easier to take.