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From the Realrates.com BBS at
Farnorth
Registered User
(6/8/01 3:28:09
Re: You must focus on the buyer's needs, not your own
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Don:
From my years marketing engineering services, here's what we did:
- We evaluated ourselves (did a yearly marketing plan). We analyzed who our competition was and why we were different or better. We identified who our potential markets were, and then went into detail on who potential clients might be within that market.
- Using that information, we cold-called the potential clients we had identified and simply asked for a meeting to introduce ourselves. Since we had pre-qualified the clients, we usually got about 50% acceptance.
- I didn't allow anyone to bring marketing materials to the meeting. The whole purpose of the meeting was to find out what the potential client did and where they needed help. We introduced ourselves and our company in about two minutes. Then we listened. If potential work came up in the meeting, cool. If not, we might ask questions about what they liked in an engineering firm. Who they thought our strongest competition was. How they liked to work with consultants. Everything was you, you, you. People like to talk about themselves, and their company. They also like to give advice.
- Later we followed up with phone calls and possibly more meetings. If potential projects were identified, we moved on to that. If not, we often found out from them about other potential projects or clients.
Although we usually worked through a more formal proposal process than what you're probably going to be doing, but we never, never, never wrote a proposal or responded to an RFP/RFQ/RFI unless we had at least met with the client once before the formal request came out. Our experience over time was that it was a waste of effort unless the client knew who we were.
So I agree totally with "focus on the buyer's needs." I'd add, use your cold calls and meetings to start developing a relationship. The person or company may not have anything now, but if you've made an impression, they'll think of you next time they need IT services.
I also really like the idea in Janet's book about making a list of all the people you know who might help you find new work. See if they know anyone in the companies you're going to be calling. If you can call and say "Joe Smith suggested I call you." it's not really a cold-call anymore, it's networking.
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