One of my favorite things to do is to visit random customers at their offices while I travel. ArrayFire is used all over the world, so I can just look in our salesforce.com leads and contacts list to find people by geography. Then a few days before I go to a location, I see what sort of appointments I can make.
Visiting customers in their own locations can really help close the deal. Early on, it was tremendously valuable to me to see firsthand the kinds of problems our customers were trying to solve. It is helpful to look customers in the eye and see that they are real people trying to do real things, not just email addresses and IP addresses interacting on a website.
Also, visiting customers is a great way to win deeper relationships that can lead to great customer write-ups down the road which require a deeper level of consent and cooperation from a customer and their firm.
For most startups, establishing a traveling salesperson does not make sense due to price points and limited cash. But whenever you travel for whatever reason, my suggestion is to take time out to visit a few customers or prospects.
We have recently brought on board new members of the ArrayFire leadership team. It will be important for them to pass through the same portal of understanding the customer.
What are your thoughts on visiting customers on the road?
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