If you own a business, one of your main goals is growth. It's hard to imagine wanting to work in a stagnant place, with the same group of customers every day. Because of this, most organizations are consistently striving to further their reach. This is why companies use techniques like inbound marketing and why bosses are constantly pushing their sales teams to contact prospective clients. If you're trying to help grow a business, we recommend reading the tips below to help keep your prospecting efforts effective and useful.

5 Powerful Prospecting Tips:

1. Identify and Engage Your Target Market:

Not everyone will be interested in the products or services you're offering, but fortunately for you, some of these prospects aren't actually potential clients. Don't give up on every initially resistant prospect, but don't waste too much time on low-probability prospects or on those who may not be qualified financially or otherwise. A great way to avoid the latter is to nail down your ideal customer profile by building out customer personas. There are endless types of people and businesses. Out of all of them, who are you marketing to? Once you detail that, you can reach out to prospects efficiently and with confidence. 

2. Turn New Prospects into Hot Leads:

Once you've identified a prospect, contact them as soon as possible. This is especially important if you've been referred to them by someone else. If they've heard about you, then they should hear from you, in a timely manner. Set aside a good chunk of each morning, maybe an hour or so, and dedicate that to calling prospects. In order to gain leads, you need to be creating interest around what you're doing, setting up appointments with prospects that have questions, sending out further information, and hosting seminars or webinars. Stay organized! Make sure you have a good system for keeping track of prospects, referrals, past contact, and future appointments. This will help you know who to contact next, and when to contact them again. Follow up is very important in this process, too. Now, this might seem obvious, but during all this contact, don't forget to be as helpful, friendly, personable, and positive as possible. You are trying to build professional relationships here.

3. Ask for Referrals:

It definitely can't hurt to ask your happiest clients for referrals. This is a great way to get your name spread throughout your target market because your clients already have relationships with other people and businesses in their industry. Be ready to provide potential advocates with tips and tricks on how to refer you because they might be nervous about it. A good advocate will send prospects to you without answering all their questions for you, and they will be resilient in the face of rejection. The best time to ask for referrals is directly after someone turns from a lead to a client themselves, while their relationship with you is still fresh and your positive interactions are in the front of their minds.

4. Try Something New:

In the midst of all your phone calls and meetings, don't forget about emails and social media. There are plenty of tried and true marketing and sales techniques you should still be using at your place of business, but if you ignore the benefits of the digital space, you'll miss out on a lot of potential leads. You can now often initially contact prospects via social media sites, gain further information about them from their profiles, and then bring that information into your more personal, direct forms of contact.  

5. Learn from Your Mistakes:

Rejection is bound to happen when prospecting, even with people and businesses that seem like promising matches. Don't let that get you down. Get feedback from those prospects who don’t turn into customers and analyze these interactions in the hopes that you can learn what not to do next time. Don't forget that those who object at first may still qualify as prospects and you might be able to capture their interest again if you learn more about them and their needs. You'll have to learn how to feel out that sweet spot between fishing too aggressively for a lead and not pushing a prospect hard enough.

We hope these tips help you fill your calendar with appointments. It's always nice to see fresh faces in the office, isn’t it? Whether you're trying to achieve greater financial success or simply share your mission statement with a larger population, new leads are a key asset.