Face to Face No Longer Required for Client Relationships

Written By Ted Grigg

The big question today in marketing is this.

“Is the face to face contact as critical in forming client relationships as it used to be?”

DMCG Results

Face to Face -- Essential?With today’s unprecedented connectivity over the Internet, by email, and the 24 hour presence of the smart phone, companies must now question just how much they can afford to spend on paying for face to face contact with customers.

Consumers complain continually about the lack of the personal touch

“I can’t get a living person on the phone!” repeats itself across America thousands of times every day. Yet companies persist in pushing the consumer to their website or requiring them to punch an endless series of numbers on the phone pad to get to the right department.

And even finally reaching the department that can help, the customer must wait for 15 minutes or more for someone to answer the phone only to get cut off!

So interacting with the Internet actually becomes a necessity for the abused customer, if not relief from the oppression!

This same stinginess of human contact finds itself in the BtoB world as well.

Travel costs so much that companies have forced their employees to travel on their own time on the weekends to save on airfare and stay in lower grade hotels that may not have such basic essentials as Internet connections. Companies have become more restrictive on the daily allowances for food and other incidentals.

But now the pressure is on to find added ways to reduce travel costs. Companies are cutting down on travel that is not absolutely required. The fact that this approach has survived and prospered gives credence to the concept that face to face time may no longer be essential to the client relationship.

Since most companies have adopted these policies with consumers and business clients, the trend has taken on such strength that companies have actually gotten away with it to a large extent.

My take on this topic taken from a recent LinkedIn Interchange 

Note one reader’s comment and my response on LinkedIn related to the agent’s reduced role in selling some forms of insurance. 

One agent respondent said: “Often, websites that are insurance related are places for people to get quotes and you get transaction customers and not clients.“ 

My response: “The difference is that today a face to face relationship may not be as necessary as it was in the past. 

In my opinion, "clients" can develop relationships purely by phone and email. 

That is the reality in a highly connected world where it is hard to compete when the customer decides to make decisions based on consumer referrals provided on social marketing websites and Internet driven research. 

Clients have become acclimated to Internet research, Internet referrals and phone support from knowledgeable phone agents. 

As hard as it is to want to see it otherwise, I think it wise to rethink how "clients" make initial AND ongoing buying decisions. 

Face to face relationships do not carry the automatic assumption that your client will always rely mainly on a personal relationship to make small or even large financial commitments”

Do you think that business and consumer clients have weened themselves away from the traditional face to face sales model? Or are we missing something here? 

Ted Grigg

Ted Grigg is a direct response strategist who helps growth-focused companies reduce risk by identifying weak assumptions before they become costly mistakes.

Over the course of his career, Ted has evaluated several hundred million dollars in direct response testing across direct mail, digital, print, television, telephone, and other channels. His work combines direct response strategy, acquisition economics, customer analysis, creative evaluation, offer development, and disciplined testing.

Ted has worked on both the client and agency sides of the business. That experience gives him a practical understanding of the pressures facing executives, marketing teams, agencies, and service providers—and of the problems that arise when activity, media volume, or creative preference replaces a clear economic objective.

His consulting work helps organizations examine such questions as:

  • Are acquisition goals economically realistic?

  • Is the allowable Cost Per Sale supported by customer value?

  • Are targeting, offers, creative, media, and response paths working together?

  • Are tests structured to produce reliable business decisions?

  • Are unproven assumptions being treated as facts?

  • Is the organization measuring sales outcomes rather than convenient proxies?

Ted’s experience includes the development of direct mail and multichannel acquisition programs for insurance, healthcare, financial services, technology, nonprofit, manufacturing, retail, transportation, communications, government, and business-to-business organizations.

For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, he developed a direct mail format that defeated established controls and helped expand the productive use of compiled prospect lists from less than 10 percent to more than 30 percent of total direct mail circulation within one year. He also planned Medicare lead-generation programs for more than 60 regional and national HMO and PPO organizations, with some programs exceeding sales projections by as much as 60 percent.

Ted founded Wyse Direct, a direct marketing division of Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, where he developed acquisition programs and helped launch a new technology product for Seiko Instruments by generating a predictable flow of qualified sales leads for its national sales organization. As vice president of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, he helped broaden the agency’s strategic capabilities and pursue new commercial and fundraising opportunities.

He is the author of The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan—A Step-by-Step Guide, published by Executive Enterprises, and has written numerous articles and conducted webinars on direct response strategy, testing, creative development, and marketing economics.

Ted earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Abilene Christian University and completed two years of graduate study at Texas Tech University. He is the founder of DMCG, LLC.

http://www.dmcgresults.com
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