Tips for Targeting Prospective Business Clients - Part 3

by Startacus Admin

This is Part 3 of “Tips for Targeting Prospective Business Clients” so you can imagine that it makes sense that we have already written a Part 1 and Part 2 (Unless you are George Lucas, and started with Part IV that is of course)

In Part 1 of our tips post for targeting prospective clients as a service business we highlighted Identify your targets, Use a Database and Record, Get past the Gatekeeper and First introductions as our first four tips.

In Part 2, of targeting prospective clients, we returned with another 4 handy tips - Make the best first impression, Hook them with a special deal, Get referrals, and Identifying what their need is.

In this post, we are returning with 4 more top tips - all simple points, but points that can make a big difference if you have little or no sales and business development experience.

Knock on doors and Cold Call

If your business is providing a service to businesses locally - there is a temptation with all this social media stuff to only use social media, mailers, online marketing etc. to make an impression.

However cliche aside - people like buying from people - they don’t like necessarily like putting faith in a company that they don’t think that they know (even if it literally is simply putting a face to a name.) Therefore the simple solution to this - is get out there and make contact. Don’t just hide behind your desk and make sales calls (although they are good for introductions and such like) but go do what your forefathers (and mothers) would have been asked to do if they worked in Sales roles - knock on doors. Introduce yourself, your business and your services - if you only get in front of one decision maker out of 10 ‘knocks’, the likelihood is that over a whole day / week of knocking on doors* you will have some success and find out more about potential clients and customers. N.B. *Asterisks included here - When we say ‘doors’ we mean a business front door, not your neighbours!

What floats their Boat

Some business people never get on with each other. You’ll never bond - never....ever. Whatever special offer, special discount, marketing gifts, marketing material you may send, will never help you build a relationship. That’s mainly because there is something they are just not buying - and it’s not your product or service - it’s you. However, you don’t need to get on with everyone you do business with, but you can still build rapport that can in turn build a healthy and long term business relationship. That rapport may be finding out that you both support the same football team, like the same band, go to the same restaurant, or forgive me for saying, but that you both have the same disdain to complain about a certain issue or place. Whatever that connection is, we cannot say, and whether you will ever find it - we cannot promise - but finding out what floats their boat, can be the difference between remaining a disliked prospective business connection or developing a respectful and professional business relationship.

Find a reason for some Press

We've already written and shared a few posts on building good PR and getting press, and to be honest this is chapter of writing in itself. However, the basic philosophy remains, whether your audience or target customer is local, national or international, in order to get press - be it on or offline you need to have a story to tell or some worthy news to share. Whether that is a birthday celebration (Startacus news last week), introducing a new recruit to the team, launching a new product to market, or announcing a competition or award that you’ve won, you need to be always thinking about how you can find an opportunity to tell your tale. Start thinking about this now, if you haven’t already.

Hold an Event

Following on from this a good reason for some press, is to hold a business event. Remember, the main thing with an event day is not necessarily to build immediate business with said prospective clients, but to hold an informative and helpful day that offers free information, and support to said business clients. Everybody likes free food and important information (well we do anyway), and this is a good way of getting lots of your active and prospective business clients in one room so that you can make an impression. Obviously you need to weigh up the costs involved and also how you will deliver the event, but this can be a good, if not costly way of developing business with prospective clients in the long run.

Hopefully these tips help you along the way and alongside Part 1 and Part 2, aid you in your business development journey. And why not email us at [email protected] if you have any other suggestions!

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Published on: 4th August 2013