Cold, Warm and Hot Contacts

Part of your Networking Strategy should be about developing your networking contacts and clients through the different stages of “cold” “warm” and “hot” (or whatever other terminology you wish to use).

Cold Contacts

I’m not talking about cold calling. However, I am talking about a brand new contact. A Cold Contact might be someone you have just met at an event, or that you have had a brief introduction to. A Cold Contact might be someone who has not heard of your business or has heard of them but has never worked with them.

If your contacts are in this stage you might “warm them up” by emailing them or calling them after an event, by keeping in contact with them through attending particular networking events and by sending them interesting articles or press releases to raise your profile (and that of your company with them).

Once they start taking an interest in your company, product or service – they might then transition into a warm contact.

Warm Contacts

A warm contact is someone who has shown interest in your company or a product or service. They might have started as a cold contact or they might be a referral from a friend or previous client or some other expressed interest. These types of contacts are simply prospects who have shown a direct interest in learning more about a product or service, are much more valuable than cold leads, but really only consist of someone whose contact information has now been captured and are not fully developed yet.

Therefore regular check-in with these contacts should be encouraged so that when they are “ready to buy” you are the first person that springs to mind. You should also be encouraging them to actively take you up on your free offerings to try out your product or come along to one of your free events.

It is also worth spending a little time getting to know these contacts and doing a bit more research on their potential. You should create a list of questions that you should know the answer to help you judge how your time is best spent. This might include:

• Budget: does the contact have enough money to buy and use your products/services? Or are you out of their budget?
• Authority: do they have the ability to make the decision to use/buy your product or service or do they answer to someone else? If they do, is there a formal process? If they don’t, who do you need to be talking to?
• Need: do they have a need that your product or service will fill?
• Timescale: is there a specific time period in mind where they intend on making a purchase?

The more you know about your warm contacts the closer you can get to closing a deal and the better prepared you are to determine if they are actually worth investing your time.

Hot Contacts

Hot Contacts are those contacts that are already your customers/clients and have bought from you. They could have made their first purpose or they could already spend a substantial sum. Time and efforts should be spent on nurturing these contacts and developing the service that you are providing to them.

This might mean cross-selling other products or services, introducing them to other people in the business who may also be in a good place to help them and developing those relationships as well.

If the particular contact or client spends enough money with you – you might also label them a VIP and provide a higher tier service. This might include extras such as regular meetings or updates, additional training or strategy meetings etc. Think about what works for you and your business.