Generating New Business: Who will you contact?

Poor prospecting is often responsible for stalling the promising careers of many professionals. They struggle with generating new business for their firm, often unsure about whom to contact and how to land a meeting.

Unfortunately, professional development focused mainly on the technical aspects of their role. The development, organization and maintenance of a targeted list of prospective clients are not skills that are taught or passed down.

Before you can get serious about getting new business you need a well organized list containing the names of contacts and prospective clients.

Prospecting is a contact sport

The first step is to be absolutely clear on what a great future client, for you and for your business, really looks like.

To discover the characteristics of your ideal clients, ask yourself the following questions:

Demographics

• What industry are they in?
• What is the position or title of the ideal buyer?
• What type of customers do they sell to?

Psychographics

• What are their values?
• How do they view our offering?
• What kind of reputation do they have?

Geographic

• Where are they located?
• Can I easily reach these buyers?
• Are decisions made locally?

Using the above questions, write out a clear description of your ideal clients; you can have more than one. Keep it on your computer, phone or tablet, as a reminder of what you’re looking for.

A future client description narrows down the universe to pinpoint prospective clients you want do business with.

Developing your list

Here are three great sources:

• Trade associations that serve your niche markets
• Trigger events; they are indications of need – for ownership change, expansion or new products
• Past clients, including lost business and previous prospects.

Using this approach, you can easily build a high quality list of prospective clients. It also eliminates cold calling; instead, you will be working by affiliation with people who know and trust you or who are at least familiar with you and your firm. This dramatically increases the odds of landing a meeting.

Landing a meeting

When you have developed your list, use these five ways to get your foot in the door and land a meeting:

• Obtain a referral from an existing client (the gold standard)
• Ask for an introduction from an influencer (accountant, banker, lawyer)
• Request help from an existing contact within the target organization
• Leverage your LinkedIn connections for intelligence
• Use ‘warm email’ to pinpoint a hot button need the prospect is struggling with.

Forget about ‘selling’; instead, focus on the problems, struggles and challenges your prospective clients face. This will help you land a brief meeting, to create interest, build rapport and lay the groundwork for an effective presentation.

You can follow up this solid initial meeting with another meeting shortly afterwards.

Top professionals understand that ‘getting a foot in the door’ is the first step towards selling anything. After all, if your prospects were immediately receptive to every salesperson, then selling would become nothing more than taking orders and that is not where the big bucks are, in terms of landing great new clients.

Just 15 minutes per day

With a well developed list and some firm discipline, in just 15-30 minutes each day you can proactively reach out to two prospects per day; that’s 10 per week, 40 per month and 400 per year. If just 25% of those meetings lead to prospects becoming clients, you will have one heck of a year. And you will have achieved it while working within your comfort zone.

Basically, a well developed contact list is your secret weapon. It’s the best way to propel your career and your business to new heights.