A couple of years ago, I was approached by a business owner who was worried about the future of his business. Over-dependent on a few long-standing clients, he knew he was in a precarious position.
It was frustrating.
He had excellent client relationships, a wealth of experience and a team that delivered brilliant work.
Yet he couldn’t seem to attract good prospects.
He felt exposed.
He knew he needed to fill his pipeline but his new business activity wasn’t going well.
He’d tried cold calling but found it soul destroying. Worse the results were negligible.
The company sporadically sent out flyers and postcards and while they were always well received, they rarely generated business.
Meeting his network for coffee was his preferred approach to prospecting and at first these meetings bore fruit. More recently, however, the number of referrals had dried up and he rarely came back with a lead.
Most annoying of all, while he struggled, his less capable competitors seemed to thrive.
I’d seen this many times before.
Business owners who are brilliant at what they do, have clients who love them but who struggle to attract good prospects.
Ability is never the problem.
Finding and attracting the right kind of prospects, that’s the problem.
Fast Forward 2 Years
His business is now enjoying a wave of new leads and has won contracts worth £100,000s.
He has added 5 major high street brands to his roster, two of whom have the potential to grow into key clients.
They are taking on more staff and have moved into fantastic new offices.
How Did they Do it?
That’s exactly what we are going to explore in this series of emails.
I’m going to share the strategies we used and provide you with simple exercises that will help you to replicate my client’s success.
While we can’t guarantee results, I can promise you’ll get a powerful set of tools and tactics for finding and attracting your most valuable prospects.
Series Overview
To give you an idea of what to expect, below is an overview of the 4 areas this series will explore.
Part 1: Identify
Where you will build a picture of your most profitable prospects.
Part 2: Find
Where you will pinpoint where your most profitable prospects can be found.
Part 3: Attract
Where you will discover powerful tactics to enable you to pull your most profitable prospects to your business
Part 4: Own
Where you will acquire the essential tools needed to build a healthy pipeline of prospects
Exercise
Below are 5 questions, the answers to which will provide the foundation for each part of this series.
The object of this exercise is to get your brain into gear.
To become the ‘go-to’ provider in your industry, you first have to nail down who your market is and get clear on the value you offer.
Write down a few quick bullets for each and we will go into more detail on them in turn later. Here they are:
- What do you want to achieve from you new business activity?
- Who do you need to attract to achieve these goals?
- Where do they hang out?
- What do you know that your target audience will find of great value?
- Why will they find it valuable?
Next time…
In our next article, we’ll uncover the 3 simple steps to attracting your most profitable prospects. Look out for it this time next week.
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Intriguing post, looking forward to finding out more
Clear & helpful