Adding customers is a compulsory exercise requiring persistence and a significant investment of time and money. For much of the B-to-B market, cold calling is no longer an option so what works best?
In our connected, noisy, ever-urgent economy, consider the following concepts to meet and develop new customers:
- Plan your attack. Rather than knocking on any door you see, plan your attack as follows:
- Specify your Core Customer, the customer most likely to buy your products in the amount required to optimize your profitability;
- Clarify your Uncommon Promise, the distinctive offering that you own and leverage to produce value for your Core Customer;
- Identify prospects within targeted growth markets successfully served by your company, and be ready to share examples about how your business has produced quantifiable financial advantages for other customers in this market; don’t pitch your product or service without first explaining the value it generates;
- Make it always about them. When you follow-up, ask about a recent item in their news and keep seeking ways to demonstrate that you want to help them achieve their goals. When a need arises, they will remember you and you’ll get a meeting.
- Pursue referrals. Build referral requests into your sales process:
- If you’ve provided an exceptional product or service experience, exceeding expectations, then the customer will be ready to return the favor by offering a good referral;
- If a prospect rejects your proposal, then asking for a referral provides an opportunity for the prospect to offer you something for your efforts.
- Engage with the prospects’ community. Participate in local industry meetings, contribute your time or share knowledge:
- Seek to develop rapport with other attendees; do not immediately hand out business cards and inquire who needs your product or service;
- When the right time arrives to make inquiries, ask who has the type of problems that your product or service resolves – the other person is much more likely to know this. Use a question like: “Can you think of someone here who is having problems with …?”
Try these methods to make your quest for new customers more productive.
How productive are your current methods for developing new customers?
How do you define your Core Customer?
