A common refrain bandied about is, “Follow your passion and the money will come”.
Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.
Most people get into business because they’re good at something. The technical “doing” of whatever it is. So they put out a shingle and hope people will beat a path to their door.
Unfortunately, this rarely happens. Unless you know how to effectively get the word out to your target audience and generate a steady stream of good quality leads. Leads you can then convert into clients.
In short, you have to go from being the “technical expert” to become a “marketer”.
Which for many is a big mindset shift.
As the business owner you are the rainmaker. It is your responsibility to do whatever it takes to bring in business.
If that means picking up the phone and calling. Or prospecting door to door. Or going to networking functions ad infinitum, so be it.
However, none of the actions above are particularly scalable and time (or lack thereof) will become your greatest enemy.
Which is why creating a predictable and scalable marketing system which attracts and converts quality leads into good, long term profitable clients is essential to your continued growth.
A quick aside: Some of you may be thinking, “I have all the clients I need and I don’t need to grow. Therefore I don’t need to market”. Fine. However, realise that nothing is forever. Clients inevitably leave for a myriad reasons. So you must have a process to continually renew your base.
Back to “marketing”.
Business Guru, Peter Drucker put it succinctly. “The purpose of marketing is to make selling unnecessary”.
Put another way, the only purpose of marketing is to Motivate Qualified Prospects To Call You!
Remember this simple rule.
A prospect who finds and calls you expressing interest is twice as likely to buy as someone you cold call.
This is especially true if you’re selling a high value product or service.
I’ve detailed these statistics in previous newsletters but they’re worth revisiting.
- 94% of your prospects will research you before calling.
- 80-92% of senior business executives research business problems online and prefer to obtain information about products and solutions through content such as white papers, blogs, articles, and educational materials before calling your company.
And here’s the doozy. . .
Buyers of high ticket items are 57% or more of the way through the purchasing decision (doing research etc.) before contacting a possible vendor!
Let me explain the importance of this last bit.
Every smart salesperson knows that the earlier you can get in front of a prospect and influence the “buying criteria” in your favour, the better the chances of closing the deal.
Your job was to bring value to the table and “educate” your prospects.
While this is still true, more and more prospects are now doing their own research and educating themselves.
Therefore you must have an effective system which puts your name in front of potential prospects when they start their search.
And once they express interest and want to know more, you need to gently nurture the relationship by feeding them more relevant information which encourages them to contact you and buy.
How?
Here’s what the system we use and implement for our clients looks like.
It’s designed to attract the right types of clients while disqualifying the rest.
This way we get to spend time with people who are a good fit and close more deals.
If growth is on your agenda, please don’t make the fatal assumption that you can sit back and have clients come to you. Contact us and we’ll discuss how we could implement this system for you so you’ll have a steady stream of prospects you can convert into good clients.
