If you’re focused on building your business you may be spending exorbitant amounts of time, money, energy and resources trying to find new clients and in many cases they may be right under your nose. In addition to searching for new prospects you should first and foremost look to the prospects that you already have.

Statistically it takes about 7 contacts to convert a prospect to a client and most people give up after only 2 or 3 attempts. This is what I refer to as a HUGE power leak. Prospective clients are a critical part of your business since they are the only thing that can be converted to actual clients. Therefore, they should be treated like gold and should be contacted consistently over a fairly long period of time until it is absolutely clear that they won’t become clients. Some people don’t even keep the contact information of prospective clients, which makes it impossible to follow up with them.

Here are 10 tips to improve your conversion ratio of prospects to clients and to stay in contact with prospective clients:

1. Email Newsletter Marketing- The easiest way to stay in constant contact with your prospects is through an email marketing campaign. Many people avoid using email marketing since they don’t read email newsletters themselves. Having people read your newsletter is not really the point- it’s getting it in front of your prospects as often as possible. Most people won’t read yours either but they will see your email and some will read it.
2. CRM- Having a poor system for tracking prospects is one of the main reasons that most people do such a poor job of it. If you have 25 prospects coming in each month and if you plan to contact each one 7 times, that is 175 contacts combined with the contacts that you need to make from previous months. That is a huge tracking project and an organized system is crucial if you plan to be successful. There are programs that exist to make this job easy and they are called Client Retention Management (CRM) programs. I would highly suggest considering using a CRM for your business. Some of the main programs are www.act.com and www.salesforce.com but there are dozens of good options that exist.
3. Closing- Closing is another name for converting prospects to clients and many people avoid closing since they are either afraid of rejection or concerned about pushing their service/product on to a prospect. Unfortunately, this is a huge problem since, if you don’t ask for the business your chances of converting your prospects shrinks significantly. Simply asking for the business will solve half the problem and learning effective closing techniques can go a long way as well. If you feel that you have a good product or service asking should not be a problem. Come up with a simple 1 sentence closing line that you feel comfortable with and practice using while speaking with each prospect. It could be as simple as ‘I really look forward to doing business with you and when would you like to get started.’
4. Key Performance Indicators- Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are
5. financial and non-financial measures used to help an organization define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its goals. The most common KPI to measure and track is monthly sales. It’s very important to know, right off the top of your head your monthly goal for number of new clients and revenues. The primary statistics used to measure and evaluate your success relative to these goals are the number of prospects and the conversion of prospects to clients. Set up a chart and track these statistics every month and you will have a window to view why you are successful or where you need to improve.
6. Follow-up Excuses- Most of your prospects are probably fairly busy and it’s very important to have a reason for following up with them. Create a list of 7-10 reasons or excuses to contact your prospective clients over time. Some of the reasons you could consider are: Discounts, Samples or your work, an event/workshop that you are hosting, referral programs/special, etc…
7. Pleasant Persistence- Most of your prospects will be ok with regular follow up especially if you have a reason for following up. In some cases, your prospects will appreciate the consistency of follow up. Try to mix up follow up’s between phone and email and be pleasant and persistent and you may enjoy it as well.
8. Prioritize Follow-up- Many of us have the ability to delay gratification and some of us don’t. Taking time to contact prospects during your work day is not the most favorite activity for most of us. But it’s probably one of the most important things that you can do to grow your business. Set aside one hour each day (preferably first thing) to follow up with prospects and you will probably be surprised immediately at the results.
9. Last Ditch Effort- After contacting a prospect a number of times (hopefully more than 7) it may be time to give up. This is perfect time to do some type of bold last ditch effort to get their business. At this point you have nothing to lose and some people really respond to this type of approach. I recommend calling and or sending an email letting them know why they can’t live without your product or service.
10. Additional Marketing Channels- One of the main reasons that most businesses don’t get enough prospects is that they have only one or two active marketing channels. Some people rely on advertising and others on referrals, but a successful business typically has at least three active channels at any given time. Web based marketing channels such as SEO, Adword Marketing and Email Marketing are especially important in today’s market.

Now is not the time to let prospects slip through the cracks - Prospects are more valuable than every before to your business. Develop a conscious process for converting prospects to clients and shut down your power leak.

Mikel Bruce
WebFlexor Websites
www.webflexor.com