|
 Print Friendly
 Email to Friend
|
|
Boost Your Small-Business Sales
|
|
Article 6: Where To Get Prospects
A well-developed customer profile tells you much about prospective buyers and where to find them.
For example, you might discover that your best customers hail from upper crust neighborhoods. Or perhaps, they tend to patronize certain eateries. To find more like them, target their neighborhoods with direct mailers, or negotiate with the restaurant to display your ads in return for distributing its coupons.
By contrast, don’t expect to be successful mining for prospects in unlikely places. Telephone books contain thousands of names of people who buy things. But how many of them qualify as prospects for what you sell?
Even if you know the type of people you’re looking for and where to find them, they remain non-prospects unless you act. Don’t expect them to beat down your door if they don’t know about you. Since conventional wisdom says it takes at least seven exposures for an advertisement to prompt a buyer to action, don’t expect meager efforts to result in massive sales.
The bad news is that there’s no magic bullet. But the good news is that perseverance brings results.
Good sales people continually seek and reach out for prospects. Every person you meet is either a prospect or a potential lead to a prospect. Ditto for every person you do business with.
“Who do you know who needs photocopy machines?” That is an effective lead-generating question. It puts at ease those you’re asking because you aren’t asking them to buy. And it simultaneously gives them an opportunity to do you and a friend a good turn by connecting one who needs with one who provides.
You can refine that approach by asking about benefits, not just products. “Who do you know whose photocopy machine breaks down?”
Even dead-end presentations are fodder for new sales leads: “I’m sorry you’re not interested, but I appreciate very much your consideration. Could you do me a small favor? I make my living selling these widgets. If there’s someone you think would find my widgets useful, would you refer me to them?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
