A few weeks ago, a discouraged business owner (whom I’ll call Bob) and I were discussing the importance of lead generation and its role in creating a thriving business. He began espousing the merits of developing solid strategic partnerships—going so far as to claim, “It should be the only method necessary to obtain high quality prospects. Other approaches are just a waste of time.” His statement didn’t sit well with me, and here’s why.
In truth, Bob has cultivated quite a few referral partnerships in his community over the years. Admittedly, this is one of my favorite ways to gain access to highly qualified individuals as well. (Here is part 1 & 2 of an article about how to create them for your own endeavors.) However, Bob is currently dealing with a huge dip in his revenue due to the following issues: He changed his service offerings, and he increased his prices. These two changes resulted in a high attrition rate, and he’s now struggling to make up the loss of revenue.
Bob was dumfounded by this situation. He’d met with his referral sources on a regular basis to ensure his good standing with each one, and yet his referrals had slowed to a trickle. To make matters worse, the quality of his prospects has also dropped.
Some points to consider: Referrals have 3 fundamental qualities:
- Volume (measured by the sheer number of referrals);
- Quality or “Good Fit” (measured by the likelihood of a prospect being in the market for your service, and being able to afford it);
- Frequency (measured by the lapsed time between referrals originating from a single source).
Bob’s strategic partners were not supplying him with the necessary volume, quality and frequency to sustain his business.
What should Bob do to remedy his challenge? What would you do?
Perhaps you concluded (correctly) that Bob should re-educate his referral sources on his new fee structure and services to help them better understand his concept of a good fit client. You might also suggest he select a few new strategic partners who have greater access to potential clients, i.e. who would regularly interact with people or organizations who fit his revised prospect profile.
These solutions would eventually prove to be effective, but they don’t address Bob’s blind spots. For a start, he’s using an old approach (solely relying on his already-existing strategic partners) to fix a new problem—that being: he needs a lot of new clients…and fast!
This is a clear case of how one’s preconceived notions can, and do, “blind one” from exploring appropriate actions for remedying current challenges. (See my article on mental models to dive deeper into this topic.)
The fact is, strategic partnerships take a long time to develop before they yield benefits. This can be even further complicated when one attempts to change an existing partner’s habits—especially if they’ve been referring a particular type of lead for years.
As I pointed out earlier, sometimes strategic partnerships will not consistently produce a high volume, quality, and frequency of clients when the market itself changes, or when your pricing and/or business offerings suddenly change.
Also, Bob’s steadfast belief that “strategic partners are all you need to succeed” prevents him from exploring a wide range of prospecting methods that would better address his current challenges.
In Bob’s mind, he erroneously imagined each strategic partner as an individual pipeline of diverse referrals, when, in reality, his referral pipelines were notably limited—i.e. not diverse at all. The fact is, there are dozens of other types of prospecting pipelines Bob could’ve been utilizing, but had, thus far, shunned the possibility of exploring. Here are a few:
Networking Groups / Events
Cold Calling / Warm Calling
Drop In’s
Giving Live Talks
Webinars
Existing client referrals
Internal (Staff) referrals
Trade Shows
Events / Sponsorships
Social Media Campaigns
Video Campaigns/ Facebook Live Feeds / YouTube
Newsletters / Articles
Books
Podcasts
Panel Interviews
Radio / TV promotions
Direct mail / Print Advertising / Fliers
Click Ads
Billboards and signage with a call to action
Public Relation Functions
If you are considering broadening your pipeline methods, these are key questions to consider:
- How effective are your methods at addressing your particular situation in terms of frequency, volume, and quality?
- How much time do you imagine is required for you to see results?
- How much content do you need to make your method(s) effective?
- What technology/platform is the most effective for you, and are you familiar with it?
- How much monetary investment is required to launch and maintain your method?
- What other resources do you need to make the most out of the prospecting method you’re considering?
- Is it possible to combine any of the modalities above?
I’m sure most of you rolled your eyes at the thought of cold calling and direct mail. Here is an example of combining them in an effective way:
About two years ago Will and I decided to send out a customized mailing—inviting a targeted list of over fifty CEOs to an exclusive “CEO-only Webinar” on the subject of the 5 Key Sales Trends For 2017. We sent a letter out to each prospect via certified mail, and follow up with each CEO (a week later) by phone to gauge interest. The result—23 CEOs registered for that particular webinar.
Everyone’s got biases and go-to’s when it comes to prospecting, and it’s natural for market climates to change for a variety of reasons. I encourage you to periodically monitor the performance of each of your current pipelines to determine their effectiveness. As an added challenge, I invite you to look for opportunities to uniquely combine different outreach methods to ensure a continuous flow of healthy prospects.
