Weekly Rainmaker Activity

This week’s task: Set up Google Alerts for your top 5 clients.

Why is this a good activity? Google Alerts deliver news results about whatever topic you select direct to your mailbox on the schedule you select. They function as a free clipping service. In this instance, receiving alerts about your clients will let you know what’s happening with their business or industry, what others are saying about them, etc., and put you in an opprtunity to be proactive in providing advice or offering assistance.

How to undertake this activity? Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and complete the form. It’s simple of self-explanatory. Use your clients’ names as the search terms. If you choose to expand this week’s task, you might also add other terms relevant to your clients — perhaps their industries, their products or service, or their competitors. Two tips to avoid an avalanche of results:

Be selective in the terms you use. For example, if you represent Boeing, you would not want to use “Boeing” as a search term because you’d get millions of alerts in a few days’ time. Instead, you might use “+Boeing +airplane +manufacturer” or ” +Boeing +air +defense +contractor.”
Set up email filters so alerts go to a specific email folder. You’ll need to make checking that folder a part of your routine, but that’s far preferable to missing a critical email because your in-box is overly full with alerts.

How long will it take? Just a few minutes to set up the searches, and probably 5-10 minutes daily to review the results and/or edit your searches.