Done is better than perfect – you honestly just need to get on with it.
I work with a very niche consultant, we are now into month 15. This is a very quick story of his experience on going to a new prospect:
“ I met with XXXX yesterday and he said that they had had a meeting last week about bringing XXXX back to do another project. The guy (Head of XXX) who needs the help said, not those again and complained about how they hadn’t fixed things last time. He went on to say what we need is someone like these guys and he opened his laptop and went to my client’s LinkedIn profile and said, this guy is who we need to talk to”.
Here are the facts of the matter:
- He is amazing at what he does.
- His LinkedIn is not flash, in fact it is visually very poor.
- We got to work with what we had.
- I connect him with relevant people every week,
- He (mostly me) networks on LinkedIn.
- We phone, email and have some cool DMs going on.
- The content posted is absolutely what his target market will connect with.
- To compliment his LinkedIn profile, he has a branded pen, phone (which he answers) and email.
- The familiarity he has with his prospects is his reputation, what others say about him and the know like and trust created on LinkedIn.
- He is very very good at what he and his team do.
- His marketing budget has been my time + sales navigator subscription to date. He hasn’t even got a professional profile picture.
- We are now building out the rest of his world ( I will even have a PDF to share!) but LinkedIn the phone, email and a logo’d pen is the only thing I have had to work with to date.
- We are on LinkedIn everyday.
- Did I say he is amazing at what he does and has his finger on the pulse.
- He knows his customer’s needs better than they do and between us we are communicating that.
Your business is very, very competitive and you have the job of displacing incumbent, entrenched suppliers, you have quite a job to do. – get on with it.
To get a look in you need to make the human connection and build up their know like and trust of you – that becomes their reality.
If you need more leads, this is what you have to do:
- Start working a batch of data
- Look sideways, off grid and around the corner for opportunities, whether that is a sector or a position in a company to pursue – get out in the long grass and off the beaten track.
- Verify, connect, call, email – study them – what can you offer them? how can you talk to them?
- Turn up next Monday and start at the top of that list and do the same again.
- And again.
- And again.
- Work your way in and see what it starts to look like…
- Add a few more fresh leads in each week.
- Go with a hunch …..
- Make a few mistakes.
- Have a bloody go.
- And have fun!
Some weeks it will be really tough, hard, fruitless but a good day is on its way, when you get a “please tell me more”.
And the only selfie I want to see is when you have made it their boardroom
