Your Prospect List is the Lifeblood of Your Business
With all the advancements in technology, and methods of communication these days, there has never been a better time for small businesses - people like you and me - to serve our clients.
But to begin you need to know how to find your ideal prospects and turn them into clients.
If you don’t know me, I’m Josh Turner, founder and CEO of Connect 365, you may also know my work from our sister company LinkedSelling, or my Wall Street Journal bestselling book Connect…
The common thread through all of my businesses is that we help our clients grow their businesses by giving them tools, strategy, and resources to get more leads and clients.
That’s what we do. Whether that’s through building better relationships with their current pipeline or finding and developing new sales opportunities through social media and email. I’ve been refining the systems we use since around 2006 when I was the CFO of a major construction and manufacturing company.
NOW, the system I’m sharing with you has been perfected. My team and I have worked alongside thousands of businesses who have implemented it and helped us test it. So I can confidently say that this stuff is proven and it’s working right NOW.
The core of any lead generation strategy is knowing this:
Leads are the lifeblood of any business. With a consistent flow of them, you can thrive. Without a steady flow of new leads...you die. It’s quite simple.
Want to learn the best systems for getting leads and clients this year?
We’ll show you how to identify your very best prospects...so you can get right to the very best leads. Join here.
So today, we're going to help you get the right side of that equation.
Let's dive in...
First Step: Understand the Lead Value of Each Prospect on Your List via Benchmarks
You might be wondering what benchmarks have to do with growing your list. Let me tell you why it’s important…
Any sound marketing system starts by first defining the right benchmarks. This might come from my CFO background...but I’ve seen so clearly, that people who understand their numbers, win more often than those who don’t.
People who just run willy nilly, have a far greater likelihood of failure.
I think we can all agree there. So let’s define it…
What does a successful result look like?
What will change in my business and life as a result?
This is intended to answer the question of ‘Is the ‘juice’ worth the squeeze?’
When it comes to sales development or lead generation, I speak with a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs and I always start by asking them
‘What are you willing to spend per lead or opportunity?
Or better yet, ‘What is a lead worth to you?’
What is the lead value of each prospect on your list?
And the #1 answer I get…
“I’m not sure.”
I see it all the time. And without the right approach to define this, it can be a tricky question to answer.
If people are afraid to tell me that they don’t know...they might give me an answer they’ve seen in some online training or from some marketing guru out there or from what some salesperson out there quoted them after talking with them for a half-hour.
Or they might share what they are hoping and wishing to get in the best case scenario - which can be a dangerous path as well.
Or maybe they heard someone in their networking or BNI group was paying for a lead and said - “yea! that sounds about right.”
The truth is - every business is different.
I’ve worked within about every niche imaginable with our clients and you can imagine that the value of each new opportunity can differ depending on your marketing strategy, your sales process, and the cost to provide your service or product.
So today we are going to walk you through a simple way to determine what each potential red-hot prospect would be worth to you. Knowing this will help you know how many you need on your list, what you can afford to do to get them, and how to manage your expectations.
Ok. Here’s another way to think about it. If you could close every prospect and literally got a check for each one you were going to reach out to...how much would that be worth to you?
The answer to this is revenue minus costs. (Acquisition costs plus fulfillment costs of servicing them)
This will help you determine the time and energy or price you should be willing to spend on each opportunity. AND, it will allow you to see how much money is coming in the door, for every prospect you add to the top of your funnel. This makes it fun and exciting, and it puts lead generation in a context that makes it feel more impactful.
When you are building a red-hot list of perfect prospects, I want you to understand what the dollar value of that prospect list really is.
It’ll give you extreme focus and clarity on whether or not an opportunity is worth it to you.
And will let you set benchmarks to develop a plan of action to achieve your business goals.
Defining your lead value really helps set up the entire roadmap to your success, and will help you quickly choose the right plan by defining the right benchmarks.
Use the Lead Value Calculator
This is something we developed internally that we call our Lead Value Calculator to help us assign the proper value to each of our opportunities. This helps us make better decisions and understand how much we stand to make for each new prospect we find.
1. You want to start simply...by setting your goal.
How many new clients are you looking to sign this year, in order to reach your overall growth goals?
Or, alternatively, if you are trying to bring in new referrals or affiliate partners, or students for a course, how many new partners are you aiming to bring on this year?
Depending on your business and growth goals, maybe it’s just 1. Or for others maybe it’s 30, or 100. Go ahead and put that number down.
2. Next - what is the lifetime value of one new client to you?
This might not be the same for every client but do your best to make a guess on the average value or amount you will ultimately collect from each new client - for the entire time as a client with you.
Not just their first payment but in total.
3. Third - it’s time to start looking at your conversion rate.
Now not everyone will know this upfront. you might need to make a guess, but be conservative. Play with this number a bit in the calculator.
For example, if you talk on the phone to 10 prospects. 10 people, that have the type of business or fit the criteria of a prospective buyer...how many can you close on average?
1? 2? 5?
This number will depend on your product or market, your prospect information, and your effectiveness at closing. Be conservative here.
4. Finally - determine how many prospects you can turn into an appointment.
In the challenge, you’ll see some real examples of some conservative numbers that we see with our clients who are getting results with the list-building system.
You have a different experience or want to see how the numbers change based on outcomes, so make edits as needed.
So, to recap, the first step before you take any action in marketing or lead generation is to know your numbers.
Be clear on these four items:
- Your goal for new clients this year
- The Lifetime Value of each new Client to your business
- Your closing rate
- And the percentage of prospects you can turn into leads or opportunities
And from there you’ll have clarity on what each new prospect in your world is worth to your business, in black and white.
You’ll know the answer to questions like these...
If you only add 20 new prospects to your list...how much does that put in your pocket? What about 50 in just the next couple weeks? How about 100?
Your Turn
There’s so much more I want to tell you about the importance of finding the RIGHT leads and knowing how to really connect with them by knowing what they actually want AND how to communicate that to them so they’ll get on a call with you and buy your product or service.
My team and I are hosting a lead generation workshop and if you want to know how to get BETTER clients consistently, you need to be there!
We’ll show you how to identify your very best prospects...so you can get right to the very best leads. We’ve been doing this and teaching these methods to small business owners and entrepreneurs for over a decade now - and it works!
Want to learn the best systems for getting leads and clients this year?
We’ll show you how to identify your very best prospects...so you can get right to the very best leads. Join here.