Are You Strategically Prospecting?
Strategic prospecting means using new-business development approaches that enhance all your other marketing and sales efforts.
For example, let’s say you have a bonus or special customer benefit that seems to be the common thread helping you close sales. Strategic prospecting means you would make sure all your marketing and advertising prominently communicates that bonus or benefit to prospects.
In fact, if you make that bonus or benefit the cornerstone of your marketing effort, you could easily have twice as many prospects… and close many more sales than you are now — because you’ve ‘pre-sold’ them with your prospecting effort.
Strategic prospecting also means that generating leads — who can later be converted into buyers — needs to be a continual, consistent process… not just an emergency effort when you desperately need more business.
This ongoing lead generating is especially difficult for consulting businesses, one-person businesses and other kinds of businesses that must stop prospecting once they land a new client or customer… in order to deliver the work.
It’s a vicious cycle, this constant stopping-and-starting.
But there are ways to prospect continually, not only so you generate potential new clients, but also so you build momentum and ‘leading expert’ status in the marketplace.
Another benefit to daily prospecting occurs when you invest in prospecting beyond what your industry “norm” has always been — when you find a new way to reach and communicate with your ideal prospects that’s different from what your competitors are doing.
Why get better at prospecting the same way everyone else does when “getting better” will improve maybe 5% to 10% — at most — upon what others have already refined?
Try something new and different, and suddenly you become a helicopter soaring over the competition — doing 25% to 500% better in your prospecting efforts.
See the difference? Strategies from outside your industry can provide tremendous pedal power.
In my next blog post, we’ll dig into strategic prospecting in earnest by discussing how to begin looking for these prospects — including who to look for, where to find them, how to communicate with them and more.
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Finally, feel free to comment on what you’ve read so far. Are you beginning to think differently about prospecting and lead generation? Tell me by leaving a reply below.
Until next time,
Janet Switzer
March 17th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Nice article Janet!
Thanks,
Bryan
Make $150+/day online
March 17th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Hi Janet,
All great points and I tie bonuses into my direct post card mailings and put a time limit on them to get them to take action.
Many of your on line principals are taken from direct mail masters but the best things about post cards, especially for an invitation to a tell-a-seminar is they’re easy to put on a wall or whatever as a reminder plus I have them register on line in order to get my free mp3 recording.
Cheers,
John Young
March 17th, 2009 at 11:08 am
In the case of one-man show businesses, the trick for creating continuous flow of work is elusive and double edged.If we push hard and land more work than we can handle effectively, hard won reputation for thoroughness and professionalism will evaporate. Go a bit slow to avoid this , and you end up having glaring gaps in the continuity.I discovered a trick , by starting to prospect somewhere towards the end phase of the work in hand. Another innovation I tried was to train a few juniors to prospect at their respective areas and do the initial work, and then pass on the client to me for the final phase of the work,where my expertise ensures that the client’s best interests are protected and promoted. This practice will eventually create one or two good junior experts , who can eventually replace me as I fade out.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Hi Janet,
I’d say that prospecting is an incredibly important and very time consuming endeavor. I’ve gotten good at one-on-one prospecting through workshop facilitation, but it is a very slow road to success doing it this way.
I need some ideas that will help me attract a much larger audience, with a much quicker turnaround time.
I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this topic.
Kathleen
Hi Kathleen,
I’ve put together a couple of ideas for you… go to:
http://www.instantincome.com/news/building-instant-interest-for-your-product-or-service
Janet
March 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am
[...] http://www.instantincome.com/news/strategically-prospect To your success, Janet Switzer Posted by klungiwe Filed in Uncategorized [...]
March 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Dear Janet,
I first saw you at a Peak seminar a few years ago, I have attended 11 Peak seminars and dozens of others, as well as done plenty of internet learning. I want to let you know that your material is the very most practical and useful of any material put out by anyone, by a large margin. I have bought your book for lots of friends, even my mechanic! I keep your book with me all the time and constantly refer to it. I thank you for your generous gifts of free materials as well, everything you produce is simple, clear, to the point and on target!
You rock!
Saphir
March 23rd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Janet, your article was very informative. I sell oil wells for an upstart energy company and work a full time job too. I am considering postcard marketing to high income individuals with a 800- prerecorded message to capture thier address and phone number. Do you have any other suggestions?
August 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Hi Janet,
Thanks for the information. I have 2 businesses. I am a freelance makeup artist/esthetician,,,and I have my own networking business that can also be incorporated with my freelancing.I am trying to build my second business by offering people the same opportunity I was given. How do you successfully prospect people for a business opportunity or how do you get them coming to you?
Thank you very much
Sincerely,
Karin Woodard
(website is coming soon)