Prospecting & Courting for new clients for your business and maintaining existing ones are two of the most effective ways to strengthen and build your relationships and improve your bottom line. Unfortunately, prospecting can be a business owner’s biggest nightmare.
Moreover, prospecting, many times, is seen as part of the sales process, i.e. focused only on the short-term which in-turn only delivers limited immediate results to the business owners.
To enjoy the process of networking and relationship building along with having fun and producing unbelievable results, one has to employ some new techniques in your business.
Here are Six tips that will drastically improve your relationship building, prospecting strategy and help boost your business:
1. Build it Before You Need it
Building your network and connecting with prospects before you need them, is the only way to build and maintain a pipeline of relationships and contacts that you can tap into on a regular basis and in time, convert contacts into contracts.
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is to try to connect and network with others only when business is slow. You should network when you are busy! Thus, your relationships with prospects will be derived from a base of genuine interest and care.
Let us repeat it: If you build your network of prospects and relationships before you need it, you’ll always have prospects!
2. Follow a Creative Approach
There are many effective techniques and opportunities on how to build relationships with others and specifically with prospects. We encourage you to use more creative and innovative ideas. We want you to stand out from the crowd.
Prospecting is essentially the art of initiating new business relationships that will present new business opportunities. If you open your mind to new strategies and ideas, you will be very effective in building relationships and in the process of courting prospects.
Try to keep your arsenal of networking tools full with a variety of new ideas. Try a new idea once in a while, identify what works well for you and do that one, not exclusively, but more often.
3. Nurture Your Relationships
We all know that it is the small details in relationships that can make a real difference. Keep in mind that the interaction isn’t about a sale. People like doing business with people that they like. As in personal relationships, strong business relationships are built over time.
Nurturing your relationships is an important part of networking and building strong relationships. This act of follow-up guarantees that you’ll never find yourself without a prospect, without an opportunity!
The key word is consistency. Consistency means that prospects hear from you on a regular basis, not just when you need them. Some of the best relationships and the biggest deals take the longest time to win. Show your prospects that you’re not only interested in working with them, but that you are dedicated to their needs.
Do you have a nurturing plan? How often will you call your relationships/prospects? How often will they receive something from you? What will they receive? How can you offer them value at each touch point? Nurturing relationships is best executed with a plan.
4. Plant your Seeds
It should be emphasized that networking, building relationships, prospecting are not about selling products to strangers. When you network with other people, you actually plant seeds and educate potential clients about who you are and the value you can offer to them.
Networking and building relationships is a process of information gathering. Ask yourself how much do you know about your relationships? What are their interests? What are their immediate needs and obvious pains that you can help relieve? Keep going out there and learn more about other people, it will be a great investment in your business growth!
5. Develop & Refine Your Value Proposition
Do you know what is so unique about you? Why should your prospects return your call, respond to your email or take a meeting with you? What is it about you that makes your prospect act?
You need to know to answer these questions with confidence and immediately. If not, you need to go and define properly your value proposition. You need to become a person of value to your relationships. You need to clearly define how you can help your prospect solve an issue or problem.
6. Decide. Measure. Act.
To be able to make a positive change and connect authentically with your relationships you need to know exactly what is working and what isn’t. We strongly suggest you to evaluate your efforts, correct them and try again until you will see magical results in your relationships with others.
Try tracking your progress for a few months so that you will have a benchmark to set future goals against.
Final word…
We know for a fact that if you incorporate some of these tips into your existing prospecting strategy, it will make substantial positive change in your company growth. As a matter of fact, you will stop chasing prospects, they will start chasing you!
What are some of your greatest prospecting and building relationships tactics?
“Itzik is an International Speaker, Bestselling Author, Business Mentor & Attorney-at-law. The Global Leading Authority on Business Development, Business Networking, Referrals & Relationship Capital & Founder of THE SWITCH® and THE SWITCH HUB®”
