Prospects Today = Customers Tomorrow

The prospects you contact and collect today are those that you’ll want to transform into customers tomorrow, next week or next month. As we’ve discussed before people may not want your products today so it’s important to capture their information at the earliest possible moment and then start a dialogue to move them from a prospect to a customer, when they are ready.

That means all small business owners need to develop a prospect database that they can market to later. By adding prospects you’ll going to develop the start of a lucrative future for your business.

The more leads you add into your funnel the more customers and sales you’re going to have in the future months ahead. So what happens if you don’t add leads into your sales funnel?

Certainly with web marketing there are literally millions of websites targeting your customers wnating a share of the online sales pie. Imagine when you look at websites — if someone offered you something for free - a free trial or download and all you had to provide was your email address, the chances are that you’ll provide those details and get on with using that free information. If that company didn’t follow up with you the chances are that you would forget all about them in just a few hours, if not minutes.

And if you didn’t download anything and went onto the next website, you’ll have probably forgotton about them when you visited the next place on your list.

So just imagine if that first company made contact with more free information - and over again in the coming months? You’ll remember the name, perhaps go back to the website and have a look at some more of what they have to offer, and then, maybe, make a purchase.

That’s much better than just forgetting about them.

So the most important thing any small business owner must do, whether you have a website or not, is to capture anyone, any visitor, and capture their basic information. Online that would mean taking an email address and at least a first name. That means you can email them with personalised emails. Rather than sending the dreaded “dear friend” email.

Treat any prospect as though they were a customer. Customers ask what you may believe are daft questions and I bet you treat them with respect and answer those daft questions immediately because they paid you some money. Treat prospects the same. After all, they don’t know you, your products or have the skills and experience that you have with your business. You’ll get really basic questions but answer them as though every email is from a customer.

Some prospects are not ready to buy not. Don’t hard sell at the moment but answer all questions and keep following up with them in whatever manner is appropriate - telephone, email or face to face. It can take time to convert a prospect into a customer, but if you have hundreds, if not thousands of leads, you will convert. Then if your conversion is lower than your expectations you’ll need to look at both your conversion process and the products and pricing you are trying to sell. That’ll be an article for another day!