If you were to ask any meeting and event planner what they would like more of in their business, I bet that 9 times out of 10 you will get the reply “more clients”.
Would you reply the same way? The thing is, clients don’t normally arrive at your business. Prospects do.
And one of the biggest mistakes I see meeting and event planners make is doing great work developing their business proposition and the service they offer, but not having lots of potential clients lined up ready to buy.
The only thing worse than not having enough qualified prospects, or leads, to follow up, is not having a lead generation system set up in the first place. Big mistake. Huge!
If you want more sales, greater profits and to grow your business, finding and creating ways to generate a constant stream of leads to follow up is vitally important. And notice I said ‘ways’, plural, not ‘way’.
I’m reminded of a chiropractor in America who successfully started and grew three separate $1million+ a year practices.
The number one question he was asked by other chiropractors was, “Can you show me a way to get 100 new clients through my door?” To which his reply was always, “No. But I can show you 100 ways to get one new client.”
The good news is that creating an effective lead generation system doesn’t have to be hard. As long as you are scheduling regular time to work ‘on’ not ‘in’ your business you will be able to find and create plenty of potential lead sources to supply your business with highly qualified sales leads.
Some are very simple and inexpensive to set up, others are more involved. Some will create a trickle of leads, others will produce a flood.
Create your system by testing different methods to see what works best for you. But remember, you will only know what is effective if you measure the results. Don’t leave things to chance.
The 4 Essential Components:
Make time to plan and set up your lead generation system, and ensure it achieves the following objectives:
- It requires little manual effort to run it effectively.
- It captures the names and contact details of the people it attracts.
- It focuses on the people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
- It automatically creates a positive relationship with the ‘lead’ and positions you as someone credible who they can trust.
You could try using direct mail to a carefully targeted list, online ‘pay-per-click’ to get people to your website, or modern day ‘inbound marketing’ techniques where leads are ‘guided’ into your system using incentives such as free reports.
Give them all a go and see what works!
And remember, if your system is effective, you will almost certainly grow your profits and your income more quickly… giving you more time to enjoy life. And isn’t that what being in business is all about?