I wanted to talk to you about the importance of prospecting when it comes to business development and making more sales.
We need to continually prospect daily to keep filling our funnel and pipeline, so that we’ve got more leads coming through our system, resulting in more people to talk to, so we can then obviously have more sales.
The biggest challenge that most business owners face, is how they’re prospecting because there are so many ways!
You can cold call, do email marketing campaigns, do direct marketing campaigns, attend networking events or functions, strategic partnerships, referral relationships and even affiliate programs.
However, how do you successfully manage all of it, regularly.
Well, the truth is, for you to succeed in business, you must play the long game and always stay front of mind to your potential prospects.
Have you heard the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind”?
Why do you think we need 21-33 touch points before people will buy?
That’s why you must consistently be showing up and staying front of mind, because your prospects or clients will not always remember. Especially when it comes time to do a referral or to give you a call when they need your services.
So how do you get past this?
Well, the reality is you need to have multiple streams of prospecting. I call them legs of marketing. You need to consistently have at least 4 legs. Like a table, so it’s nice and sturdy.
One leg is going to generate leads one day. Another leg is going to generate leads another day and, and, and so on.
If you want to continually have a funnel of incoming prospects, you’ve got to make the decision on which table you want to sit at.
Do you go down the traditional smash and grab path of direct marketing and direct selling, or do you navigate to where the best business is, and focus more on relationship selling?
For me, I’ve been in sales for nearly 30 years. And it’s all been commission-based selling and I’ve run my own businesses as well.
It’s all been commission-based churn and burn lead generation at the end of the day. Get the lead, close it. Get the next lead, close it, and so on… Unfortunately, that doesn’t work long term because you’re going to have burnout and even run out of leads.
You’ll have low repeat business, and it ultimately ends up costing you x5 times as much money to get the sale.
That’s why, I truly believe that to have a strong funnel, we do need a mixture, but relationship building always wins, hands down because we must always continually be in front of people’s minds.
Relationship selling costs you less in marketing and significantly increases conversion rates, which also saves you time.
In that relationship selling, there’s really three or four ways that you can do that.
Firstly, you can be part of networks and attend networking events. Please note there is a massive difference between networking and extending your network.
Networking is 100% transactional based. You’re going there with a deliberate intention to close a business, somehow, get a referral, somehow, make money today somehow.
Showing up regularly for either, keeps you front of mind.
With a referral partner, you must also be in front of mind, even if you think you are their only referral partner. Somebody else could come along and just because they were the last person to see your partner, they will get the business.
So how do you do that? You streamline your automation through your CRMs.
You have multiple contact points with them, regularly. You also make your referral partner accountable to providing you a result by requesting one referral from you per month and simply checking in on them.
That’s why I love strategic partnerships! We all go swimming together in the same pond with clients we are servicing, at the same time!
We have a common goal where we’re advocating and collaborating for the greater good of the end user. It’s not a direct referral system. It’s a how can we help together attitude.
To succeed with strategic partnerships, all you need to do is have regular meetings with these people once a week, or once a fortnight. Diarize it.
Then there are affiliate programs. That’s when other people are selling your products or services for you. It’s a great way to leverage what you do, and what they do as well, because you advocate for each other.
Again, you must be seen regularly to stay front of mind with this prospecting.
The best part in these scenarios is its hardly price orientated, more so, because of the trust, the want to engage you and your services.
I think this is the way of the future. Deeper, meaningful conversations that get a faster result.
If you want to know more about how you can build these systems together, register for a strategy call my diary here: https://calendly.com/tasta-coaching-call/15-minute-discovery-call and join my private Facebook Group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/264080115781866 where I’ll be sharing more ideas like this on how you can make more sales in your business today!
