Meet Jamie

Jamie Shibley is the CEO of The Expressory, a strategic gifting agency that believes the key to accelerating your business growth and profitability in the post-COVID era will rely on your ability to maintain personal connections to build stronger emotional loyalty in your business relationships. After 20 years in the corporate world full of it and E-commerce roles, Jamie launched an online brand of her own. Jamie understands the influence of strategic gifts and wants to positively impact the mental well-being in our world by helping businesses acknowledge care for their community members, respected as a market leader. Jamie's work has been featured on Entertainment Tonight and forbes.com. 

What are some of the best practices that you see for this relationship nurturing?

In this post-COVID era, we kind of have a challenge as business owners, how do we continue to grow and succeed when, when we are working with nurturing our leads and converting more, I think that we've depended so long on this idea of, you know, you get this drilled into your head, this know, like, and trust, people need to know you as you trust you. And so great technology helps us reach more people, right, to reach the masses, and if that's how you're networking, even if that's how you're out first meeting people, that's great. But how do we get into and move people to the lake and trust if we're going to stay just digital and surface? And that's where I think this focus of, we need to bring a mix of a lot more personal touch, touch points with people. And so our best practice, what we always recommend is that you identify when you have prospects that come into your space, identify the key ones, because they can't all be like, like your top dream prospects, right? You know, grab, grab 10 of them, or 20, we say 25, right, your dream 25? Who are those people, and then make a plan so that you are showing up in some way in front of those people, those 25 leads, say, every six to eight weeks, but you need to do so through a combination of digital and physical, maybe even face to face. But how are you showing them that you understand their pain points that you understand where they're at, in, you know, whatever their business needs are, how whatever you serve, right as your company. Be generous with your smarts, and the things you share with them to educate them. And, you know, each time that you're in front of them, it moves that relationship forward a little bit further. And when we say use physical touch points in some way, whether that be handwritten cards, printed material, like your articles or research, the reason we say that is because physical tangible items in hand trigger the part of your brain that is that perceives value. So if I send you something that you are holding, you're already going to think I am my company, my service is more valuable. Because you're looking at something, right?

I'm curious, if you could go back to your 20-year-old self, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently with regard to your professional career?

Well, it's funny because when I graduated college, I started working right away for the company that I spent 20 years at and like I said in it, but at the same time, I was so obsessed with this with programming and creating and so I was outside of work. I was creating my own website, right and it was a time when the web was for Starting to take payments. And so I set up this whole crafting website where crafters could sell. I'd rent them space, all this stuff. And I had a bunch of crafters renting from me. However, I wasn't doing a great job getting them business customers. And so what I recognize then is like, well, I didn't know marketing, I had to figure out how to market on the web. And so I went and I searched the web. And I printed out this enormous book on marketing on the web. And then I realized, I'm just starting out my career, I can't also spend time trying to figure this out, and I let it go. And so what I would tell myself now and what I think universities in the younger generation are learning more of is like, I didn't have to know it all. I just needed to know others who did. And I needed to know how to find them. Right? Like, what if then, I had known that I should have just hired someone who was good at marketing? Maybe it could have had etsy or a version of it, right? Sure. I had no clue then how to navigate that world of relationships. And so I would say, but like, I also think that in today's world, people know that a little better than we did back then maybe you're better than I did, I guess. 

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http://www.theexpressory.com/