Circa65

Douglas Adams – author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series – wrote that the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” is 42!  Now I wouldn’t think of opining on quite so cosmic a topic, but in the technology reseller marketing world of customer communications, I believe the answer to the ultimate question is 52.

What “ultimate” question are we answering and why does the number 52 represent the right answer?

The number 52 represents the total number of contacts per year the best performing VAR businesses are making with customers and prospects. This is not meant to infer you should “bombard” your customer contacts every week with some email sales pitch. Rather it is recommendation that your company should communicate with – in some fashion – each customer and prospect company on average, once per week throughout the year. Note I did not say have your sales rep contact their IT director or purchasing manager once per week. I said your company should communicate with their company once per week. The “how” is up to you as is the “who”. It can be a sales call, an invite to an event, an e-newsletter, a tweet, a link to a blog and it can be from anyone in your organization to anyone in the customer’s. The goal is building a consistent dialogue between two companies in an effort to create institutional relationships.

You think the number 52 is too high? What’s your “answer to the ultimate question”?