Marketing, in general, is a multi-step process that requires our hard work and dedication to see things through to completion. We know this, we’ve practiced it, and we’re still tinkering with the very best ways to achieve the results we want. However, with all the focus we put on marketing, have we been ignoring something just as important all along? Cold market prospecting is half of the successful equation, and learning how to utilize the power of prospecting to your advantage will certainly give you the leg up you’re looking for in terms of generating those high quality leads!
Alex Schlinksy—founder of the popular and incredibly successful site Prospecting On Demand—is a cold market prospecting expert, and he’s here to give us the rundown on what exactly defines prospecting, as well as the two key ingredients it takes to find success. With his company, Alex works to help marketers and entrepreneurs grow their business and teach them how to utilize effective prospecting and sales system while stressing the importance of executing services first and getting leads second. With his help, we’re sure you’ll find the success you’re looking for in cold market prospecting—so, let’s get started!
Cold Market Prospecting and The CLICK Technique: “I” for “Irresistible Offer”
Before we can get into the details of cold market prospecting, however, we have to talk about The CLICK Technique! A five day crash course that I’ve invented, The CLICK Technique is designed to help you get your foot in the door and build a strong foundation for your online marketing. Each letter in the word “CLICK” stands for something different you’ll want to consider, and when these steps are put together, it’s a surefire way to guarantee results!
For cold market prospecting, we’ll be focusing on the “I”, which stands for irresistible offer. Once you’ve already gotten attention to your webpage and have started cultivating relationships with potential customers, you want to make sure you can seal the deal and turn the questionable into a guaranteed profit. That’s where an irresistible offer comes in: you want to make sure you’re giving them something they can’t get from anywhere else. That’s how you seal the deal, and that’s what will set you apart from the competition.
This situation is no different! Cold market prospecting relies entirely on your ability to seal the deal when making an effort to reach out to cold contacts. The interaction itself is already something that the receiver is new to, but by guaranteeing them that you can solve their problem and do it the best, you’ve got an edge up. That irresistible offer is what will really make you pop out and what will help you gap the bridge in the end during the very important follow up stage.
Cold Market Prospecting: The 2 Things You Need To Focus On
The basics of online marketing comes down to the fact that everyone wants to learn how to generate leads. However, with this tunnel vision thinking, almost all people forget about the one key aspect that lets you get those clients in the first place: cold market prospecting. Prospecting is going out there and actually creating opportunities to create leads for your business. While the overarching theme of marketing is creating and constructing strategies to grow your business, prospecting is the part of that strategy that deals with specifically detailing how you’re going to convert and get new leads for your business.
Getting into this field can be hard. People tend to get nervous that they don’t understand rules as well as they should, but it’s necessary to ask those questions about things you may not completely understand so you can ensure that you’re learning what’s necessary to succeed in your business. The only dumb question is not asking a question, after all.
Step 1: Inbound Lead Generation
One of the main things you need to focus on when it comes to cold market prospecting is the idea of inbound lead generation. It’s something that everyone working in the field wants. However, with the multitude of ways to go about getting these leads (whether it be through Facebook ads, Google, referrals), you want to make sure you’re using the best and most effective ways to bring the best quality leads right to your technological front door.
Outreach prospecting is one of the most effective ways to get your name out there in order to generate strong, quality leads. Cold market prospecting relies entirely on your ability to actively reach out to people who you believe could become clients of yours, the most common of these being cold email outreach, LinkedIn outreach, Facebook outreach, or—on the rare occasion—cold calling outreach.
A major key to cold market prospecting relies entirely on you understanding your customer avatar. You have to understand who your ideal customer is because you can’t prospect to someone you know nothing about, and taking the time to understand the business that someone works in will put you leagues above the rest when you’re trying to facilitate a deal for the first time. Combine that knowledge with utilizing effective methods. You’re gonna have a great opportunity for someone who wants to work with you.
Cold Email Marketing
Overall, cold emailing is highly recommended. It’s less abrasive than cold calling, and it gives someone a chance to answer your inquiry whenever they’ve got the time to do so. There are multiple ways to utilize cold emailing as well, such as using Facebook to find local customers and sending them an irresistible offer or simply starting a conversation. The first part of the process is actually getting a response, and after getting a response, you want to get them on a call. From there, you want to sell to them. Each step is critical to your long term success in prospecting.
However, there are important things to remember when using cold outreach. Most importantly, you need to remember that it’s never about you. It’s about the customer and what they want. There’s a person behind that screen, and they’ve got other things to deal with. However, they are your priority because they’re the leads that’ll allow you to grow your business. You need to ensure that the offer you’re sending them is viable, useful, and valuable to them. What message could you provide to them that would make them want to answer you? These are the things you need to keep in mind when starting with cold market prospecting.
Overall, the best thing you can do is start taking action. People often believe that there’s 1000 different ideas and methods to get clients, which leaves them with a bunch of metaphorical puzzle pieces and no guide on how to put the puzzle together. The best way to conquer cold market prospecting is to start taking action, even if it’s just as simple as reaching out to 10 people a day. Imperfect action is better than waiting around for something else to fall into your lap.
Step 2: Niche Down and Specialize Effectively
The second step to effective cold market prospecting is finding out what your niche is and capitalizing on that in order to reach the most engaging and applicable audience. The idea is to be as smart as possible; it’s about working smarter than the next person, not what someone else is doing. If you’re focusing on yourself and your business, your life will be easier, and you’ll be more focused on achieving what you need to achieve.
Starting off, you need to have the right niche to specialize in. This’ll come in handy in a lot of cases, but namely, this will help your sales call process immensely. When you get on a call and the call doesn’t go your way, you can’t learn a lot from your mistakes if you’re calling separate clients who have different needs. If you can whittle down your skills into something specific, you can improve upon your process every time you make a call by keeping notes of how the conversation went and possibly where things went wrong if the results are less than desirable. Being able to tinker with your proposal with every call you make gives you a head start on large scale cold market prospecting.
However, you’ll need to be careful when you’re specializing in a specific field. Having a niche for prospecting does end up keeping your business open for all opportunities—if you’re an expert in a certain field, you’ll miss out on certain opportunities, but as you build authority in that field, you’ll quickly be the trusted advisor. If you’re a standard business coach and you’re not skilled in a specific niche, your focus will just be on the prospecting side. You don’t have to change much because you just have to change your sequences, making things a little easier. The biggest determination is how well trained you are in your niche, and how you promote yourself as a business marketer.
Overall, if you want to successful in cold market prospecting, you need to ask yourself how to follow up. Where are you going to get back to the person you’re reaching out to? What will you do to take the extra step in the follow up process to get over the hump? It’s all part of the process that will show who’s very successful with cold outreach and who isn’t. At the end of the day, you’re still reaching out to someone who doesn’t know who you are, but if your offer is strong enough, then you’ll be able to make the sale.
Cold Market Prospecting: Generating Leads Successfully
In the end, cold market prospecting comes down to a simple routine: generating the leads, generating the list, sending them emails, and getting on calls and trying to make the sale. If your focus is on cost, you’re doing it wrong. Marketing is only effective if the focus is on getting a return in the investment.
Cold market prospecting can be competitive, but you can’t be afraid to go out there and make something happen. It’s okay if you make a mistake; don’t look at failure as the end of an opportunity. If you accept failure, you’ll normalize it. Instead, challenge yourself to overcome failure and always find every opportunity as a learning experience. If you’re getting 1% better every day and you’re focused on learning, it’s impossible for you not to succeed in the way that you want to!
