You want new customers, I want new customers, everyone wants new customers. (Well not everyone, believe it or not but in some of my calls some owners tell me they don’t want any. Go figure.)
Lead Generation is a game, cat and mouse, back and forth, win or lose, give and take. If you’re in it you want to be taking more than your giving, I would hope. And if you want your business to survive you need to win more than you lose. Even in losing you want to win.
So how do you win in a mostly loosing game, and you will lose more that you win.
1) The Rule of #2. It’s ok to be number 2. Now you’re asking yourself if I have lost my mind. No its still there, I think. But let’s think about this. You out there going after a new account, which btw belongs to a competitor who wants to keep it. Now think further that you the owner or the account and 2 other competitors also want THAT account. Yet you would really like to have that account as a customer. Use the rule of #2, which is be the number 2 supplier (even if that does not get you any sales) so when #1 messes up (and we all mess up at one time or another) the account already knows you and your capabilities so you can take it over.
2) The Little Things: There is no magic formula in getting new accounts, no magic pill or secret potion or wand waving (sorry Harry Potter but there is no such thing as magic). It’s just doing a lot of little things right for a long long time. Then once you get a lead nurturing it till it grows up to be a real customer.
3) Don’t get tired of your message. As you’re out there in the land of self promotion you are going to get tired of saying the same thing over and over again and again. You might but guess what your prospect wont. To them, it is new and or you are being consistent which to me means you are a candidate for a reliable supplier. Just don’t lose faith in your message. You don’t change horses midstream.
4) They need to know you to buy from you. You can’t play turtle, hiding in your shell and expect people to find you to buy from you. Fact is, if you’re not out there promoting yourself, people will not buy from you. Period, end of story!
5) Look for yourself. Are you a needle in the haystack? When was the last time, or first for that matter, that you did an online search for yourself, of for that matter did a keyword search for yourself? Well get cracking, if you can’t be found they can’t buy. And oh yes, don’t forget the power of the landing page.
6) Engage yourself in Social. This for the average to above average sales or marketer is no longer an option. The creation of a powerful Social presence centered around your marketing strategy will come back to pay major dividends. Work it right you make friends and money at the same time.
7) KISS. Yes, Keep It Simple Stupid. We all or so it seems, seem to go into the world of complex or industry jargon at times. Know your place. You need to be able to talk the talk yet at the same time, make it so everyone, even my 86 year old mother can understand.
Larson Notes & Satire: Two interesting things happened yesterday. First we got 2 new accounts, always exciting. One was thought Online and Social Media marketing the second from just sort of hanging around till the project dropped, which took 9 months. Go figure. But what we do and say does work; you just need to have the consistent staying power. We are now getting 4 to 5 new prospects just from our online social marketing a week. At the same time we still use the “old way” to go out and find customers.
Second is I got a cold call from a company who had down a “inspection” of my web site and were telling me how they could fix my errors and get me listed first on Google. After I got the guy to SHUT UP, I said yes my site age makeup errors but did he do a key word search because if he had done a keyword search he would have found out that I am listed 1st page on Google, Yahoo and Bing for my key word strings and if he could get me higher than 1st page we could talk wherein he went back into his canned speech on how our page had all kinds of errors and on and on and on. He did not listen nor did he care what I said or even wanted to pretend to listen. Now while I might care that my website has errors, fact is, it is coming up on page 1. Then 1 minute later a young lady, from the same company called saying the same thing. Told her I just talked to someone form their company, I am number 1 and get me OFF their call list NOW! Dare I say it was an Indian Company using auto dialers? If that is what you want, they do work cheep.
At Larson & Associates we don’t work that way. We listen and respond to what the customer or prospect says. What is important to them is what is important to us.
“We don’t sell lists, we find customers.”
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Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.
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