In the simplest of terms, effective prospecting is all about generating leads that you can convert into clients.
For whatever reason, too many people make prospecting more difficult…and stressful…than it really is and needs to be.
The Best Marketing Attracts Potential Clients
When promoting their services, most people focus on their own skills and abilities.
Their advertising is self-promotional, touting how good they think they are at what they do.
This approach is based on the assumption that with enough advertising, sooner or later prospective clients will believe these promotional messages and become clients.
Unfortunately, most prospects…and clients are driven by self-interest.
Unless they see some benefit for themselves in promotional messages, they tend to ignore them.
By redefining marketing to mean attracting prospective clients instead of simply promoting your services, the focus shifts to clients’ needs, wants and expectations and away from your skills and abilities.
As a result, the issue of what you offer is replaced by the more important issue of addressing clients’ needs.
From this perspective, here are 5 easy steps to effective prospecting.
Step 1: Determine Who Your Ideal Clients Are
If you haven’t done so recently, here is how you can develop a profile of the kinds of clients you serve.
go over your client list for the past several years
- what kind of work do they do?
- are they typically
- young
- married with young kids
- single, divorced
- nearing retirement
Perhaps you would like to develop a different type of client base.
Take some time to describe what you imagine your ideal clients to be.
- where do they generally work?
- where do they spend their leisure time?
- what hobbies do they have?
- what are their social activities?
A clear profile of your ideal clients is the essential first step in effective prospecting.
Step 2: Identify What Your Ideal Clients Need & Want…And How You Can Satisfy Them
To serve your clients as effectively as possible, you need to learn everything that you can about them.
This is the information that applies to everyone who uses the service that you provide.
- what problem… or problems…do they have that your service will help solve?
- what opportunity…or opportunities…do they face that your service will help maximize?
To identify how you can satisfy ideal clients, simply match your personal and professional resources to your ideal clients’ needs and wants.
Invariably, this involves a clarification of who you are and what you do for clients.
By matching what clients need and want with your ability to help them, you are well on your way to effective prospecting.
Step 3: Offer Prospects A Compelling Reason For Choosing You
By combining your personal brand and your brand promise, you have a very compelling reason for prospects choosing you.
It is however not enough to simply have a compelling reason for prospects to choose you…they must understand why you are their best and most logical choice.
To help prospects understand what they need to understand, you must get your message to them.
This means selecting and developing the right marketing communications to convey your message to your target market.
In today’s online world, upwards of 80% of prospects rely on the Internet for their information.
Without a doubt, your own unique website is an essential element of effective prospecting.
Step 4: Prospect Continuously
The most effective prospecting is continuous and ongoing.
Prospects’ need for your service does not disappear just because you are busy doing something else.
Whether by means of an online presence, or an in-person prospecting program, the most effective prospecting depends upon continuously working to attract prospects…not just when you need new business.
Step 5: Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up
If there’s one thing you can do better than the competition, it is to follow up with every lead, prospect and client.
Purely and simply, effective prospecting depends upon effective follow-up.
Not only will proper follow-up increase your competitive advantage, it is the magic ingredient that effective prospecting, ensuring a sustainable flow of repeat business and referrals from satisfied clients.
Here are 4 keys to effective follow-up:
I. Systematize Your Follow-Up
In order to complete all of the countless actions necessary to achieve your goals, it is essential to systematize everything that can possibly be systematized.
Following up with leads is something that not only can be systematized, it must be systematized.
II. Be Persistent
In practice, persistence is all about doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
This usually means having among other things, backbone, chutzpah, determination, intestinal fortitude, spunk and stick-to-it-evasiveness.
III. Help Your Prospects Learn More
Your market knowledge positions you as an expert and helps attract prospects.
Don’t keep this knowledge to yourself.
Tell prospects about what is happening in the market in which they are interested.
By helping them learn more, you improve the likelihood that prospects will choose you as their agent.
IV. Be Patient
The virtue of patience requires us to allow sufficient time for appropriate actions to produce their intended results.
For More Information
See How To Achieve Better Marketing Results…Sooner.
This is a very useful resource for cutting through marketing theory.
It will help you identify your resources and how you can use these resources to ensure effective prospecting.
