ONE AT A TIME, ALL THE TIME
All small business owners want to experience rapid growth. Growth usually means the acquisition of new customers, thus increasing the bottom line. Let me ask a question. How do you define rapid growth? Do you define it by the number of new clients you get? If you define it by profitability, how many new clients do you need to reach your yearly goal?The answer to these questions may vary from business to business, but I discovered a common thread: small businesses try to cast a large net with the hope of catching a few fish. In today’s environment small business owners are told that they have to have a web page and that they have to have a large presence on social media.
Consequently, they blog and post as often as possible and sit and wait for positive results which seldom meet expectations.
Going back to a question I asked in the first paragraph, how many new customers do you need to achieve your goal? Let’s say that you need 75 new customers to reach your financial goals every year.
While I agree that it is important to have a web site and a presence on social media, I also find that most small business owners have the greatest success when they are telling their story and sharing their benefits in a face to face meeting with a prospect. If you can close 1 out of 3 personal presentations, how many do you have to make in a year to reach 75? The number is 225 touches; and if there are 250 work days a year, you need to make less than one presentation a day.
Technology provides us with name and contact information of our prospects. Sites such as LinkedIn and Alignable are full of people that would like to establish a relationship that will help them survive and grow their bottom line. If you have defined your target market, you can get contact information and set up an appointment to share stories.
The process is simple:
- First know your target market; know their needs and be able to articulate your benefits.
- Now reach out to your target market and set up appointments for the next week. This can be done by an online invitation, a text, e-mail or my favorite, a direct phone call.
- Remember, you always must give in order to receive so be ready to share free information on how they can grow their business.
- At the meeting ask the person to share their story. Ask a few probing questions like, “What is your biggest pain in your businesses?”
- Share your story. Provide a possible solution for their pain. Then share why you are doing what you are doing.
- If they don’t buy at this point, ask permission to add them to your value based newsletter.
- Stay in contact with everyone all the time.
This process usually takes less than 2 hours a day, and it is a lot more reliable than casting the large net.
ONE AT A TIME…ALL THE TIME
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Tips & Advice by Nick Petra, CFP – Founder of Strategic Duck and BizQuack
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