1 Targetted Database

No business can succeed without a database, as targeted as possible. If a targeted database can be purchased, this is best, but most SME's don't have that luxury. Some excellent database sources that can be targeted even on a minimal level are: white pages on-line, yellow pages on-line, Department of Commerce Business Directory. Your own referrals and contacts should be added to this database. Most business people can readily manage a database of 800-1600, which will take no longer than 30 minutes to 1 hour daily to "farm" correctly.

Obviously, if you don't have a database, or it is a poor database, this strategy can't even get off the ground. What database do you have? What help do you need, if any, to develop it?

2 Plan, Schedule, Track, Analyse and Refine Your Database Communication

If any of these steps are missing, you will certainly fail. It's a downright waste of time if you're not strategising in a disciplined and regular way about how you're going to approach your database of prospects and new business contacts. You're shooting in the dark as a business owner and making phone calls without any test and meausre procedures. You'll need KPI's and analysis of each activity, as well as written reports. A lot of businesses (too many) operate around trust only, when telemarketing is in place (of possibly any function!), and we are yet to see that trust justified in even one instance. After the first call, these calls are no longer cold calls. By calling within a 90-day cycle, using appropriate scripting, you ensure that calls remain warm and that they build relationships, not burn them.

How often are you contacting your database? What details are you tracking? What analysis do you do? What ways have you been able to perfect this part of your database management to gain improved results over time?

3 Ensure that What You Offer to Your Database is Actually Relevant to it

Your script should be something the listener actually wants to hear. You don't have a market if you haven't got anything your target market wants to desperately know! A lot of people come unstuck here but would be surprised how easy it is to come up with a great script if they get together with their business friends to construct one.

What script are you using? Did you take a guess at it, or able to do thorough tests? Is there a number of alternative ways to approach your clients with fresh and intriguing offers each time you connect?

Tip: If you cannot get 1 out of 20 on your first cold call, then 2 in 20 on the second call, then 50% on the fourth cycle, you're definately on the wrong track and need to make major adjustments! a networking member of a prominent networking group was able to refine their script to get a 1 in 14 opportunity from cold calling, and 100% hits from their warm referred leads!

4 Have Impactful Marketing Material to Leave with the Client or Potential Client

Use your business friends to critique your marketing material and help develop a simple package which compels people to take action. (Check out our Member Showcase to see Leonie Davis' before and after of her marketing flyer for Imagine.)

What do you actually show potential clients when you visit them? What is the quality of this material compared to the best you've seen? What do you actually leave with clients? How does your marketing material captivate your prospects and clients attention to keep them warm or even hot as a lead who's likely to "act" on your marketing message. Does that material match up to the best you've read?

How does your target market follow the marketing funnel of AIDA? (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)?

There is much more to business success than this, but these 4 steps are the most crucial things you can do to build your business. This is a major strategy of highly successful businesses and yet it is almost free. Why would you not use it? (Scared of the phone? Find out an easy, permanent solution!)