How do you get cold clients to notice you?

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world, if your cold clients returned your calls, responded promptly to your emails and bought from you at the first point of contact ... it sounds like utopia to me!

So back to the real world. When your prospective clients arrive at work for the day (or night), they face an inbox of emails, many of which they'd rather not read or receive. As the day progresses, they are inundated by a never-ending stream of marketing e-shots which clog up their system. They are under  pressure and have to achieve more with less and they feel haranged by the 'bubberly' salespeople who phone them, many of whom will offer exactly what you do.

So in response to these challenges:

How do you ensure you are remembered positively by your prospects? 

What strategies do you implement so that your prospective clients respond to your communication and buy from you?

There is no quick answer to the above questions, but I suggest that 3 areas must be developed, implemented and tracked by everyone in a business development role.


1) A clear business development process: This should include a variety of communication methods (social media, e-mail, phone, face-to-face), all of which are delivered as part of a timed and coherent strategy, rather than a scatter-gun or ad-hoc approach.

The process should incorporate consistency on the one hand, whilst experimenting with new ways of communicating your message on the other hand, because it's only through experimenting that you will identify what really works for your market as well as stay on top of market trends.


2) Something which stands you out from the rest: if you read back through my blog to my second business development tip, it's focused on the difference between generic selling points and unique selling points. To be remembered, you need something which is specifically unique.

Example:

I deliver team training, staff development and individual coaching. I will soon be marketing much of my work as e-books. However, the one thing which my cold clients remember about me is that because I design and deliver all my own work, I can reshape my full-day workshops into specific 1-2 hour long sessions, delivered over a period of months.

These shorter sessions are not only affordable and convenient for many clients, they also deliver a better training experience in terms of long-term impact. When my cold clients try to place who I am (in that they have had prior contact with me, but are a little hazy in their memory) they frequently say:

"You're the guy that delivers the shorter lunchtime sessions"

"Oh yes, you were the one that offers sound-bite sessions"

There's clearly much more to my work than soundbite sessions, but at least they have picked up on something positive which they remember me by.


3) A healthy mindset: business development can be a lengthy and painstaking process. Quite often it can take 18 - 24 months to move from contact to contract. Central to a positive mindset in business is:

A)  A grasp of how to be personally resilient.

B)  An unswerving belief in your product/service and the value it adds.

If either of these elements is weak, your business development process will unravel and you will struggle to deliver to a high standard.

Thanks for reading!

I help businesses become more profitable by developing staff performance:

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