Developing new business sales can make you feel like a hamster on a wheel: trying too hard to get nowhere. But maybe the problem isn’t what you’re doing, but how you’re doing it!
Think about the steps you take to bring in new business. Are you focused on reaching as many people as possible? Or do you carefully select new clients that are part of your target market?
Let’s look at two different sales approaches for bringing in clients.
Scenario 1
You spend a couple of days tracking down as many leads as possible, then send out an e-mail “blast” (where you send the same generic e-mail to a massive list of addresses) for prospective clients. There are too many contacts in this group, so you don’t have time to follow up with them. You get almost no response. If you keep repeating this process monthly or even weekly, you’re putting a lot of effort into searching for new clients – and not a lot of effort into cultivating those relationships.
Scenario 2
Each day, you track down one potential new client. You spend a couple of hours researching that prospect’s needs, then send them a personalized email. You follow up with ideas or insights about how you could help them solve a problem. They are much more likely to respond to your personal attention and outreach. With about 250 workdays per year, that’s 250 prospective clients with whom you’ve made a custom-tailored, personal connection!
It’s the power of small numbers.
You can stretch yourself thin, adding contact after contact, unable to personally keep in touch with any potential new client – that’s a perfect plan to keep spinning that wheel.
OR you can stop, slow down, and carefully select new relationships to foster.
