What if your tiny, one person, work from home in your jammies business had an eager, super connected sales staff? What if you had the resources to grow that staff every week? Heck, every single day?
Sounds expensive, right? And scary – I mean, how many of us entrepreneurs can afford that kind of payroll?
You Can Build a Dedicated Sales Team Without a Line of Credit or Investors
The truth is, you probably have swarms of people just waiting to bring you your next deal. Happy clients, buddies at The Chamber, your accountant and of course your grandma! The only problem is, they have no idea just how much you need them and they may have no clue what you really do.
Create a Call To Action
Don’t be afraid to flat out ask for referrals. Let your clients know you always appreciate a referral to their friends and colleagues. Tell your family how much you’d love their help growing your business. And prove to your colleagues how valuable you could be to their clients. Still a little timid? Try one of these techniques:
At your next networking event, try to make some valuable introductions between your contacts (remember, networking is not all about you). Follow up a few days later to see if the introduction was a good fit. Show genuine interest in helping your colleague grow their business and then let them know you’re always excited about new referrals as well.
When you wrap up your next project and get that great feedback on your work, let your client know you would love to work with more clients just like them and would truly value a referral.
When your family starts asking for Christmas ideas, let them know the only thing you need in your stocking this year is an introduction to a killer lead (and maybe some new jammies).
Filter Out the Junk
Even better than getting great leads and referrals is getting the right leads and referrals. Our friends and family have the best intentions with their referrals, but let’s be honest — how often are they completely off base with what we actually do?
The best way to get good leads is to educate your lead sources on what you do and who you do it for.
Write a short 3 – 5 sentence overview of your business. Now, write it again using layman’s terms (our customer vocabulary worksheet can help with that). Spend some real time on this exercise, it is one of the most critical things you can do for your business.
Once you have that messages crafted, go update your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Add it to your email signature. Put it on your home page. Rewrite your website About page so that it reflects this concise description. And wake up every single morning ready to live and breathe the work you’ve described. (And please, please share it in the comments below — even if you’re having a hard time with this exercise, we’ll help you get through it!)
Because, here’s the real problem we run into with leads and referrals. It’s impossible for anyone to send us a good referral if we ourselves don’t even know exactly what we do and who we do it for.
In an effort to grow (or just skim by) we take on any work we can get – distracting from the overall goals and vision for our business.
And then we’re so busy scrambling to wrap our heads around it all, we forget to let people know how much we appreciate and need them to be our sales force for us.
Download the resources in this article: Customer Vocabulary Worksheet | Client Persona Worksheet