Three tips to help you get better at securing warm leads to grow business
“Before I got married, I had six theories on raising children. Now I have six children and no theories.” — John Wilmot
We all long for that road map to guide us to a higher level of success in all that we do in life, whether it is in parenting, fitness, buying a car or a house, or saving for your children’s college education.
Yet, I’ve discovered a surprising level of irony in the way many organizations and their sales divisions go about securing business. Sure, there are sales plans, strategies and tactics in most companies. But the contradicting force that sabotages a higher level of success is the lack of discipline at the individual level.
Historically, here at Victory Consulting, we have floundered in a hodgepodge, haphazard manner. We have worked with little consistency and too much randomness in our prospecting for and pursuing of opportunities. This has rendered us operationally inefficient.
Furthermore, we once rested on the convenient self-talk that the best way to get new business is to do good work. While that thinking has relevance, it often serves as a rationalization to procrastinate the necessity of systematic, disciplined selling.
Enter 2008.
When the client work we were conducting was not commensurate to producing like quantity of new business, we looked hard into the mirror and came up with a simple plan. After all, simplicity breeds execution.
All who are responsible for chasing new business must, at a minimum, apply the following approach for working warm leads:
- Make a list of every friend, family member and business prospect you know where there may even be a hint of an opportunity for you to establish a professional connection. Create it, save it; add to it and save it again. Covet this lead log.
- Prepare in simple sound bites what your business is, how it provides value to those who work with you and what your differentiators are. This must be brief and easy to digest and this is something on which you must get feedback. Most sales professionals either don’t prepare this or assume it’s an inauthentic “pitch.” On the contrary, being able to functionally and succinctly articulate your value proposition, ask smart questions and listen is a sales professional’s responsibility.
- Penetrate your lead log and work your network. Ask people if they can introduce you to others who you can approach and if you can use their names as a reference. Tell them you don’t want to create discomfort, only reciprocal opportunities. A key component here is to determine how you can help the people who are helping you. It’s another responsibility of building connections.
This three-step approach is the antithesis of complex. Yet, how diligent and self-accountable are you in applying this process?
The truth is when you put these in action on a regular basis, business not only starts coming in more frequently, but there’s an exponential benefit that feeds momentum. And the benefit is the power of higher confidence. ●
Learn more about Joe Takash at:
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Joe Takash is the president of Victory Consulting, a Chicago-based sales and leadership development firm and a keynote speaker for executive retreats, sales conferences and management meetings. To learn more, visit www.victoryconsulting.com.
