Are you still doing it the old way? I mean getting clients.
Are you still slugging it out at networking events, and spending endless hours on social media, only to bring in a new client every few months?
Here’s what I mean:
You go to a networking event. You collect a few business cards, have a few conversations, and then you come home. You probably don’t really follow up with the people you met because you didn’t really feel a connection with them anyway. So you decide that event was a bust and you hope that the next one will be better.
or
You log in to Facebook every morning. You stay logged in all day and you try to be active in groups by responding to other people’s posts. You look for relevant things to share with the group in the hopes that they will see you as a valuable resource and a wealth of knowledge … and ‘eventually when they need help’ they will call you.
Do either of these scenarios sound familiar? If they do, it’s time to change the way you are doing your prospecting.
You’ve heard me say this before, so it’s not really news.
But you may not have made that change in your habits yet, and so now it’s time.
In order to get real results from your hard work (or your hard networking!) you need to set up a plan, a goal and/or strategy and some action steps.
Something like this:
Plan: I want to network regularly so I can bring in new clients on a regular basis, and my focus will be my Facebook groups.
Goal: I will bring in 2 new clients in the next 45 days.
Strategy: My conversion numbers are currently very low, so I’ll need to connect with a lot people in order to convert prospects to sales.
Action Steps:
Step One: I plan to reach out to 3 direct connections every day in x, y and z Facebook groups for the next 30 days (that is 90 people that I will cultivate conversations with – 21 per week).
Step Two: Of those 21 conversations each week, I will invite at least 7 of them (30%) to have a consultation with me (sales conversation). They may or may not say yes, but I expect that if I am connecting with the right people that at least 3 of them will say yes.
Step Three: If I have 3 sales conversations each week, that adds up to 12 conversations in the month. My goal is to get at least 2 clients from those 12 conversations.
That’s an actual plan. And it only takes speaking with 3 people every day to reach that.
And consider also that the better you get at converting your sales conversations in to clients, the fewer people you will have to connect with on all levels.
The key is to have a solid plan and daily actionable steps that move you forward.
Old way: Going out blindly and hoping for the best.
New way: Setting a target, tracking your activities and monitoring your results.
The new way may seem more complicated, but it is SO much more effective that you will wonder why you ever did it any other way.