GETTING CLIENTS: PROSPECTING & SALES
Prospecting is the process of finding and engaging with potential clients (not the actual sales conversation).
It takes 16 net hours on average to secure a client when doing manual prospecting, out of which about 80% goes to prospecting.
Prospecting usually involves researching potential clients, reach-out via email, LinkedIn, ads, phone and networking events (in-person or online).
You can reduce the prospecting time by building an inbound lead funnel (hard) or buying leads (easier), but you still need to be ready for the fact that it will take time chasing down leads (people are busy), and it might take several conversations before you have a sale.
That said, 10 good clients and you’ll be making more than $100K per year.
The insight here is that
a) You must learn to pick your clients
b) You must come up with a process that gets leads to show up for appointments (about 40% show up on average) and get them to work with you ASAP
When you get started, you can’t be too picky. Since this book is geared toward startups and small agencies, we’ll focus on how to define the client you want:
That's it for when you start up. When you get some clients in, you can become pickier.
Leading with value means you’re not approaching the business with an ask (selling), but rather by giving them something.
Your value can be directly associated with your product or softly connected.
Here are a few examples that have been working very well for some time. You can bank on them.
[Executive] Lunch / Dinner - You host a meetup of the audience you want. This can be for networking or mastermind. This can also be a virtual meeting. Six to 12 people only. Once you become the host, the person that knows everyone, that is connected to everyone, your potential clients will quickly open to you, you’ll learn what’s troubling them, and what they need.
The PR Article Tactic - Currently being used in Umbrella’s call center to generate thousands of appointments per month. You reach out to businesses, telling them you’ll write a free PR article about their business, and promote it online. There is a specific winning way of doing this which I’ll detail below.
The Podcast Tactic - same as the PR article tactic, just inviting them to your podcast. It will give you the opportunity to meet potential clients, create rapport (trust) and follow up with a conversation about their business/marketing.
This type of approach is excellent for rapport building. Once there is no “work” to discuss, the client’s guard is down, and you can have a truly open discussion with them.
Free Report – For example, Umbrella provides our members with beautiful demand generation reports that provide an overview of the entire marketing status of a client. Sending these reports to clients provides them a lot of value and at the same time positions you as a pro.
*See report example in Appendix – Demand Gen Report A
Pay Per Result - You’re basically saying to a business you’ll partner with them. You want to give them value first, such as get them on the first page of Google, increase their lead conversion rate, or get them clients. They would only be charged after you’ve done your job.
Examples:
*The higher end you go, the more softly connected tactics are used. When you are trying to get clients, you are in the business of creating relationships. This is your sole job, and through the conversations you’ll have, you’ll learn how you can provide value by asking the right questions.
The above examples (networking lunch, podcast, PR article) are reasons to meet and engage. But how do you reach out?
The value proposition is strong enough to do cold reach-outs, but it’s always easier to work via referrals. Let’s review a few reach-out tactics.
The RNB has been tried and tested by endless entrepreneurs for anything that was sold.
You and your close network of family, friends, current and past colleagues work with a variety of service providers.
I’m not referring to people you know that might have a business or a decision maker in a business. It goes without saying that you should contact them. I’m talking about service providers that work with your personal network.
For example, you or your network might have a dentist you frequent, an attorney or accountant, maybe a car dealership, a veterinarian, or a hairdresser you always go to.
We all have these people in our lives.
Here’s what you do: Make a list of 10 people, including friends, family, and close colleagues. Call them and ask each of them to provide you with a list of the service providers they currently work with. Tell them they don’t need to refer you or be involved in any way. You just need the name, phone number and email if they have it.
Now you have 50 to 100 people you can call and say - “Hey I got your number from your client so-and-so. He’s my brother/friend/cousin/co-worker etc.”
This puts you in a power position. The person you’ll be speaking with would want to be nice to a friend or relative of a client.
From that point you can carry the conversation to many directions, whether it’s a podcast for dentists, pitching them on a result-based solution, or asking why they have bad reviews (so you can sell them).
But the most important thing is you have their attention and good favor for a few minutes. That’s gold in sales.
When people see you time and again, and exchange a few conversations, that familiarity is making them much more susceptible to doing business with you.
Many true long-term relationships have their origins in networking events. It’s literally all about persistence. People see you and you see them time and again. You both become part of life’s scenery (in a good way). By the fourth networking event, they all recognize you, even if you never talked to them.
This is why events, conferences, masterminds, work very well.
No matter which NICHE you want to target, it will have events and small-group masterminds.
They’ll also have a digital, less effective version called Facebook and LinkedIn groups. There are networking groups on these networks that have very active discussions and REACH exactly to your audience.
As an example, once upon a time I became a member of the Dentists Professional Network, with 4,749 professionals. I also became a member of the California Retail Network (9,000-plus members) and the Medical Group Management Association (64K members), to name a few.
Can you guess why? I’m obviously not a dentist, nor have I ever been in retail or a healthcare manager. But at some point, the people in these groups were my target audience.