Are you finding it’s getting harder to get in front of the right prospects? Secure meetings and close deals? And therefore aren’t growing at the rate you’d like?
If so, you’re not alone. We hear this a lot from business leaders in a diverse range of industries.
Speaking with them, most admit they don’t have effective prospecting, marketing and sales plans in place.
There’s no strategy and process and they end up trying lots of different ways to attract clients, which effectively scatters their efforts and doesn’t produce results.
In short, they’re frustrated, but don’t know where to turn. What to concentrate on. What works to consistently bring in quality clients.
If you relate, the following model will help.
Notice that “Deals” live at the intersection of Prospecting, Marketing and Selling. Meaning that each component has to be strong in its own right. Put another way, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Let’s take them in turn.
Prospecting involves figuring out who could be a potential client and directly approaching them to ascertain if they have the issue and are open to solutions you provide.
It’s a personalised one to one activity where you directly reach out, be it by phone, email or LinkedIn.
The intersection between Prospecting and Selling is Qualification. Your role here is to determine if the person is actually a prospect. i.e. Are they in the market for what you offer? Do they have decision making authority? Is your solution even relevant?
Once the person has been qualified as a potential client, the sales process takes over.
Sales involves demonstrating the benefits of your solution and ultimately getting buyer agreement. Of course there’s a lot more to this. You can get our free guide to sales conversations here.
Which brings me to marketing.
I define marketing as all the activities that occur to get a prospect to your door. Selling is getting them over the threshold to become a client.
Effective marketing systems give you leverage. While prospecting is a one to one activity with is time bound, marketing is a one to many where your goal is to attract prospects, educate them so they feel you can help them, and call.
Providing extensive information allows your prospects to make an informed decision by:
- Helping your prospects better understand their problem.
- Guiding their research into possible ways to solve the problem.
- Shaping their expectations for a solution.
- Informing their evaluation process.
- Positioning your organisation as a trusted advisor.
At the intersection of Marketing and Selling is “Positioning”.
Educating your prospects before meeting them positions you as an authority and can significantly shorten the sales cycle.
You’ve already outlined their issues, shown them you have a solution, listed common objections and your responses and highlighted your uniqueness. All in a hands off way which does not appear self-serving.
Your prospects get to digest the material at their own pace without feeling any sales pressure. So when you do speak you can cut to the chase far more quickly.
The better your positioning, the easier the sales process as your prospects have already convinced themselves you are the best choice.
Wrapping up, you’ll sales performance will dramatically improve if you align your prospecting, marketing and selling activities as I’ve outlined above.
If you’d like our help in doing so, head over to our PMS Program where we’ll work together to develop an effective marketing and sales system to get more attention, more meetings and therefore more clients.
