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I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day. She’s a successful video producer and boasted that she never has to do any marketing.

“Business just comes my way through word-of-mouth,” she said, which is not a very friendly thing to say when you’re having coffee with a marketing consultant (me.) Especially when that marketing consultant (me) is buying the coffee!

But a couple of minutes into the conversation, I discovered that she does a heck of a lot of marketing. She just doesn’t think of it as marketing. To her, it’s just meeting people and being helpful. Continue reading →

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Let’s face it. You can do a fantastic job of prospecting, generating leads, attracting referrals and word-of-mouth, and basically getting lots of potential clients to find out about you and your services.

That will definitely get you some business.

But you can get a lot more business – and, I suspect, better clients – if you take a more active role in getting “prospect meetings”. Continue reading →

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A couple of weeks ago, I got the umpteenth call from a sales rep who’s been hounding me since we chatted at a conference seven months ago. I’m actually interested in working with her firm. But her bi-weekly “just checking in” calls are, frankly, starting to annoy me.

I know what she’s trying to do. She’s trying to stay in touch with a prospect (me) who has indicated an interest in her services.

Hey, that’s exactly what I teach and help my clients to do!

But she’s going about it the wrong way. Instead of building the relationship, she’s becoming a pest. (She actually said to me once, “I’m sorry for being a pest, but…”)

The main problem with her approach is that she’s becoming someone I want to avoid rather than someone I want to do business with. And if you’re following-up with prospects, that’s exactly the impression you don’t want to make!

So how do you stay in touch with prospects so you don’t seem like a pest and, instead, become someone they actually look forward to hearing from? Continue reading →

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When my daughter was six or so the game we enjoyed playing most together was Where’s Waldo. It involved finding the Waldo character amongst a crowd of other people, who were usually doing interesting things like juggling or lion taming.

If you ever played that game with your kid, you know how challenging it can be. I remember one time searching a page for nearly half an hour before becoming convinced – convinced! – that Waldo wasn’t there.

(My daughter found him about a minute later.)

Fun game, even when it’s frustrating.

But it reminds me of another game that business owners play that is rarely, if ever, enjoyable. And that is: Where’s The Prospect?

This came up a few times last month during my Practically Painless Prospecting workshop. It’s easy enough to find companies you want to do business with. But how do you find the names of the people in those companies you need to reach? Continue reading →

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I had the opportunity to chat with a fellow marketing guy earlier this month. He was about to do a workshop for a local professional speakers group I belong to and I was helping him set up.

This marketing guy – Aidan Crawford – is one smart fellow. His target market is professional speakers. So doing the workshop obviously helped position him as an expert in front of an eager-to-learn audience. I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of those in attendance became new clients for him that very day.

Like I said, smart guy.

Now Aidan could have simply done the workshop, reaped the benefits, and went home with a smile on his face – satisfied he made a connection with twenty or so people in the room.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he used the power of leverage to get even better results. Continue reading →

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Over the past week or so, I’ve had more than a few people tell me that, although prospecting can get good results, it can also be uncomfortable, embarrassing, and undignified to say the least.

As one Marketing Memo reader put it, “Let’s face it. Prospecting basically sucks. But if you have to do it, you have to do it. Right?”

Well, if you have that attitude, prospecting will suck. And no matter how much you may need to reach out to new prospects, you probably won’t make very many of those calls or send those emails.

But if you change your thinking around a bit, and look at prospecting in a different way, you’ll find that it really can be simple and easy. Continue reading →

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Since starting this series on prospecting, I’ve received a lot of questions from readers, and also some great tips.

Thank you!

As I said in my last Marketing Memo, prospecting is simply the process of introducing yourself to people who have a likelihood – and that’s key – of being interested in your services. There are many ways you can do that. You can make a call, send an email, use social media, get introduced somehow, meet at a networking event, etc.

One email I received yesterday asked, “I’m using email as my main prospecting method. How many emails should I send each week?”

I understand why she asked that. But her question concerned me a little. It implied that, when you get right down to it, prospecting is really just a numbers game. If you make enough calls, send enough emails, or reel off your elevator speech to enough people at a conference – you’ll eventually land some clients.

But that’s not what prospecting is really about. Continue reading →

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Let’s face it. No one likes to cold call, warm call, or do any type of prospecting. Even if you don’t use the phone and, instead, reach out to new potential clients via email, the process can be intimidating.

But sometimes you just have to do it. Especially when you need to land some new clients fairly quickly.

The good news is, there are ways to make prospecting calls – or send prospecting emails – that are easy-to-do and get very good results.

Here are just a few of those ways: Continue reading →

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I’m guessing this is the umpteenth article you’ve seen this week on setting goals. After all, it’s the start of the new year. Just about everyone has something important they want to achieve in 2012. And we’re all hungry for tips on how to achieve it.

So what are your business goals this year? Is it to break into a new niche market? Land five better and higher-paying clients? Transform your website into a client-attracting machine?

I’m no expert on achieving goals. (I leave that to the Tony Robbins’ of the world.) But I have accomplished some big things over the years. And, yes, I’ve also failed – sometimes spectacularly – to achieve other goals I’ve set for my business.

So I guess you can say I have lots of experience with both success and failure!

What have I learnt? Continue reading →

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A friend called me this morning and asked, “So, what are your plans for the holidays?”

“The holidays?” I replied. Then I casually glanced at the calendar. Uh oh. The holidays are next week. How did I miss that coming so fast?

For most people, planning for the holidays concerns family, gifts and travel.

But for us business owners, it may also involve landing a new client (or two) before the new year begins.

So let’s take a look at some proven strategies for landing clients quickly… strategies that can work within just a few days. Continue reading →