These last two months have certainly been unprecedented. Hopefully, we have survived the worst of it and can now focus on gaining momentum into recovery. It is time for us to clean our pipeline of any opportunities that are no longer going to transpire. We must fill it back up with new opportunities to get us moving. Here are four tips on how you can gear up your prospecting:
1. Adjust your ideal client profile- Even if you had a documented perfect client profile pre-pandemic, moving into recovery, we might need to adjust to better align with the current environment. What are the ideal industries, demographics, problems/opportunities your ideal clients should be experiencing? The more open you are on who you are looking for, the better you can design your prospecting plan.
2. Develop a Prospecting Mix- There is no such thing as only one way to prospect. You should have a list of multiple strategies you are using to target your ideal clients. Here are a couple of examples of activities you should have in your prospecting mix. We recommend you should have 3-5 active strategies at one time:
a. Cold Calls- Yep, they still really work!
b. Cold Emails
c. Marketing/Advertising
d. Asking for Referrals/Introductions
e. Adding Linked In Connections
f. Free Talks – How can you educate your audience with a strong call to action?
g. Blogs and White Papers
h. Networking Events- Several are still happening virtually during this time.
3. Compelling Messaging- Your messaging should be able to quickly grab your audience into engaging through an intense 30-second commercial. Messaging should focus on pain indicators that you know should resonate for them. If they are an ideal client for you, you should be able to understand that they are experiencing.
4. Track Everything- I am sure you have heard the line “what gets measured, gets done.” You should decide upon a frequency goal for each of your prospecting activities, share your plan with someone else, and track your results. For each prospecting activity, we need to be monitoring how frequently you did the action, and how many meaningful conversations happened as a result. It is only with tracking both that we can adjust activity based on conversion rates.
Let me leave you with my two favorite Sandler rules on prospecting.
- Rule #1-You don’t have to like prospecting; you just have to do it.
- Rule #2- The only way to fail at prospecting, is to fail to prospect.
The clearer you are on who you are looking for, the better you can design your prospecting plan.
