"What's worked before?"
With so many ways to reach your customer nowadays, it can get a little confusing!
It's true! And the danger with this is that if you spread your message too thinly over many channels of communication, then your message is not going to have the right 'oomph' to bring in the amount of new customers that you want.
How a lot of new companies see sales & marketing
Example: Many companies find themselves creating an excessive amount of social media accounts. The reason?
"because every business needs to be on every social media platform these days."
What happens: To cope with all of the different methods of communicating with customers, you panic and post generic messages about your company everywhere.
The result: Potential customers are left a little underwhelmed about your message and you sit there, waiting for the phone to ring.
Don't spread yourself too thinly. Instead, throw huge dollops of yourself in a few places.
Has that analogy got you thinking about throwing whipped cream on apple pie? I know it has for me. Mmmmmm.
If you're just getting started scaling up your business, then you need to optimise the effectiveness of your time.
It's better to spend 10 hours on 1 way of finding customers that you know works, instead of 1 hour each on 10 ways of finding customers that may or may not work.
Which should I throw dollops on?
So, which one should you focus on? I bring you back to the title of this post "what's worked before?"
Exercise: Think back to all your leads or customers.
Make a list by writing down where each one came from, e.g. referrals, networking, social media, giving an introductory email before you call.
The end result will be a list of all the business conversations you've had, and where those conversations started.
You'll probably notice a notable amount have come from the same source, or the majority of them came from a few sources.
To you, those sources are like Geese that lay golden eggs.
Get more sales by going with what you know: take the top 2 sources in your list and spend your time on them
When you're building up your sales, it's vital to make best use of your time. You can do this by spending time on what's got you results before.
Don't make the fatal error of spreading yourself too thinly. This is especially important if your business is just building up. Make sure that you make best use of your resources available by going with what works.
Branch out when you're ready
Of course, as you grow and get a more stable income you will want to venture out and find new ways of reaching customers. This is the important next stage of growing your business by making your message far reaching.
Don't run before you can walk though. Get money coming in by doing what you know has worked well for you before.