Since just training a new employee can cost thousands of dollars, you need to be sure you’re always making the most with what you have.
While you might think that your leads are hard to come by, there are ways to convert your current leads and find new ones you might not have thought of. A few sales prospecting tips will ensure that you get the leads you’re looking for.
Here are five tips for prospecting leads that you’re looking for.
1. Devote Time
Just like you would block out time for a meeting or work out in your free time, you need to devote time every single day to prospecting. It might not be your favorite part of your job, but it’s essential to making sure that you never hit a wall with anything you do.
You can’t expect your sales to just fall into your lap. You need to get out and there and ensure that your irons are still in the fire, are running warm, and ready for action.
Unless you’ve somehow gotten independently wealthy in the time between when you got hired, and now, you need to pick up the phone.
Getting started on a call isn’t easy, but y would need to devote yourself to it nonetheless. Focusing your energy on getting new clients is a must for any business. New business might fall into your lap every once in awhile, but it’s not very common and not very likely.
Making the time to prospect shows your commitment to working hard, not only to your coworkers but also to yourself. When you set an example for others, you also set up accountability for yourself.
2. Focus On Your Market
The potential number of customers you could have is vast and intimidating. Even if you’re in a specialized field, it’s likely there are a number of different companies competing for your market. You can’t take on everything, so you need to figure out where to start.
The question you need to answer first is “who is my ideal customer?”
While this may be no simple query, you can start by looking at your products and what kind of research you have inside your own database. You can surely name who your top five or ten customers are. Then you need to start picking them apart.
Find out who your worst five customers are. Think about what you don’t like about them, why they irritate you, or why they don’t come back as often as you would like.
How do you offer what your best customers like to every single customer without upsetting your five worst customers? Your campaign needs to bring those unfaithful or bad customers along for the ride.
Create a profile of the ideal customer so you can start to track them down.
3. Plug Away At Your Call Lists
Surely you’ve got a list of warm leads that you’ve been working on for a while. Don’t let any of them cool off. Take your time to call those people on the list whenever you get a chance.
Prioritize your lists and see where people on the list are in their process of decisionmaking.
They might have questions that they haven’t had time to ask you and you could be calling into them at just the right time. Perhaps there’s some information you can send them to win them over. Invite them to an event that you’re hosting.
You should host a webinar or a seminar to let them know more about you and your products.
Touch base with them in a consistent manner. Rather than letting them forget about you, you need to stay in touch so that they know about you. You need to keep warm leads warm or even get them hot if you can.
4. Get a Referral
While good reviews and great advertising can bring plenty of people through your door, it’s rare that people stick around or even purchase after their first encounter.
What works the most is to let someone else handle the work for you. Ask for your best clients to give you a referral.
Rather than just have them do this outright, you can offer them something in return. Have some coupon codes ready to offer a discount to anyone who helps you out by giving you a reference. Give a discount to both first-time customers and the people who they refer to you.
The best moment you should ask for your referral in is right after you make a sale. At that moment, the rush of the sale is on their mind so letting them know how they could increase the value even further isn’t a bad idea.
5. Get On Social Media
With billions of users on Facebook alone, you need to ensure that you have a fairly active profile on social media. While there are some Luddites who might think that social media is only for kids, there are plenty of adults on it now.
In fact, most marketers have whole departments that are devoted to getting leads and encouraging sales via e-commerce channels. Social selling is the new way to get the word out to clients.
With the help of Apple Pay and the long-standing Paypal, you can rest assured that there are secure ways to pay for goods online. Referring your clients to your site from social media is a great way to broaden your reach.
You can call people and refer them to social media or use social media to spread your contact information.
A Few Sales Prospecting Tips Go a Long Way
If you’re a call marketer, you might think that these tips don’t all apply to you but they do. The common denominator for all of these sales prospecting tips is to ensure that you’re always out here in front of your customers.
If you want to know more about leads for small business, check out our latest guide.