5 ways to get more customers despite the bad economy

Veteran Business Owners ask me “Mike, how do grow my business in this bad economy?” My answer is always this: proper lead generation. 

Are you cheaply and efficiently bringing in new prospects?  If not, then you’re engaging in what I call ‘random acts of marketing.” Translation:you’re starving your business of growth.  It’s like trying to drive a car for 100,000 miles without adding any oil. It works, but it runs really rough. 

What is lead generation?  It’s the act of getting prospects to contact you. Most business owners do this incorrectly. They look only for people who are ready to buy. As soon as they find someone remotely interested, they jump all over the prospect in hopes of making a sale. I call this manual labor marketing.  It’s the most inefficient use of your time.   

Please don’t miss this point. Your objective is to get a herd of people to contact you. Not the other way around.  You must give people a reason to contact you in the first place.  Before I go into how to do that, recognize that lead generation is a simple, 5-step process:

1. Get prospects to contact you
2. Collect their contact information
3. Give them valuable information that teaches them something
4. Create a call to action
5. Automatically follow up with unconverted leads

These strategies will work in any business in any industry, even yours. 

The best way to encourage people to contact you is to provide something of value. This is best done in the form of a free report or e-book, which are downloadable in PDF format. Or, take it one step further and offer a free printed book. There are two reasons for this. First, your prospects are pressed for time and overworked. They won’t make time for you to talk about your products and services unless you give them a really compelling reason to do so. Secondly, you need a reason to get them to give you their contact information. 

Say you’re a plumber, and you want a herd of people contacting you about plumbing services.  You offer a free report or book entitled 5 Deadly Sins That All Plumbers Commit When Fixing Your Pipes And How To Avoid Them. This resource would tell them what questions to ask plumbers, how to judge the quality of their work, common mistakes they may, etc. The tone of this report will clearly paint you as the obvious choice when selecting a plumber. The self-publishing process is very simple.

When your prospects read your stuff, they will see you as the authority; the go-to-guy.  In the next article, I’ll reveal how to quickly and easily get your prospects to give you their contact information.

Mike Lorence teaches veteran business owners how to break free from the chains of average results by using marketing and selling systems.  To see if there are still any free business growth packages for vetrepreneurs like you, go now to www.freevetbizgrowthpackage.com

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