A necessary evil that comes with most businesses is prospecting leads. Whether this is through cold calling or advertising, finding quality leads is the best way to gain customers that can easily turn into repeat clients. Here are five tips to help.
1. Understand Your ICP
The first tip to finding a lead for your business is to understand your ICP. An ICP stands for your Ideal Customer Profile. Not every consumer is the best match for your business. Tree service providers prefer homeowners with a yard over apartment owners, OBGYN’s prefer women patients over men, etc.
A strong ideal customer profile can go a long way in terms of effective marketing and sales strategy. Once you have your ICP created, you can tailor all of your messaging to attract that specific type of person. You can also work on your pitch so that you are speaking directly to that consumer. Knowing who you are targeting and planning accordingly will help your sales process tremendously.
So how do you find your ideal customer? Go through your best customers and look for a common denominator between them. Are they all smaller teams? Do they all live in a certain location? Are they all in the same field? Or perhaps they aren’t similar in personality but they are all similar in needs. Maybe each of them have been open for a long time but are looking to revamp their business by taking it online with an e-shop.
A detailed profile allows your prospecting to go from random 1:1’s to strategic meetings. This saves time so you only focus a couple hours on prospecting a week versus spending hours cold calling in an attempt to make a hit.
2. Identify People Who Fit the Criteria
Once you understand what your ideal customer profile looks like, it’s time to put it into practice by finding people that fit the criteria. Go through your prospective clients and sort to find which ones are proven to thrive when working with you. It may feel upsetting to pass by several potential projects but finding people that are proven to have success can lead to several repeat clients for the future. Customers you can build long-term relationships with are worth more than a few one-time deals.
Another benefit of a thorough ideal customer profile is that you will have a specific description to give when asking for referrals. It is easy for a referral partner to hear a generic profile and absentmindedly agree to keep a lookout. When given a detailed profile, your partners can go through their circles to find a client that matches your criteria. ICP’s allow other people to do sales work for you so you can continue to grow.
3. Create a Prospecting Strategy
Contact
The next step in finding prospective leads is to create a strategy for how to make contact. There are various ways to find your leads through cold calling, emailing, advertising, etc. These methods are to just peak the client’s initial interest before you move onto nurturing the relationship. This process’ time will vary depending on what industry you are in.
Try using multiple forms of contact to reach the client. Cold call a prospect and send a personalized email as well, working in tandem will help the potential client remember you and show your interest in getting to know them.
Qualification/Meeting
Once you’ve piqued your prospect’s initial interest then it is time to qualify the lead. Be sure that you have a system in place to decide whether or not the prospect meets the requirements to make them a successful client before you work with them. Refer to your ICP so you can narrow down your list to the highest quality customers.
Schedule a phone call or meet with your prospective client to get to know them. Learn about their needs and decide if your business can help solve them. Compare them to past clients who have succeeded or failed and decide if they are worth pursuing a relationship with. Once you’ve decided, it’s time to give a proposal.
Proposal and Close
At this point the prospective client should understand that your business is there to service a problem that they are facing. You should have brought up their pain points and shown how you can help them succeed. Offer and discuss the plan you have to work with them in the future and close that sale!
Now you either have a high-quality client that you can build a long term relationship with or you can further hone your ICP to include what you learned from this prospect. This will set you up for success in the future as you continue to grow your business and find new clients.
4. Know Your Market Dominating Position
Your market dominating position is used to separate a business from their competitors. The dominating position offers a benefit that shows how one business can meet needs in a way that others cannot. One of the most famous examples of an effective Market Dominating Position is the ever-so-famous Dominos.
Dominos quickly grew into a billion-dollar corporation within a few years in an oversaturated pizza market. They did this by having a strong market dominating position. There were plenty of other companies selling pizzas at cheap prices that buyers could choose from; however, Dominos created a niche market for themselves by offering fast pizzas for college students. Gearing their marketing towards this group made Dominos the logical choice for a college-student looking to get pizza quickly.
5. Use Lead Prospecting Tools and Services
You don’t need to use extra tools to help you prospect and find quality leads. Just like you don’t need to use measurements when you cook, but it certainly helps the process, right? It is absolutely possible to find leads by hitting the streets and going door to door or cold calling every person in your area. That’s what businesses did to grow in the past and it does work….eventually.
Marketing companies such as The Lead Ninjas can help you find high quality leads. We build ad campaigns to reach customers that fit your ICP. By using Facebook and Google we are able to reach a larger group of people to best find customers most interested in your business. Contact us for more information.
