If You Want More New Business, Here Is The Next-To-Last Group Of 5 Things To Stop Doing

On the way to the full list of things to stop doing if you want more new business here are suggestions 16-20.

16. Pitching Standard Services

It's no secret that clients respond most to personal and professional services that solve a address a current pain or support a potential gain.?

A good pitch will identify the pain or gain and provide a detailed solution.

This starts with careful research and thorough information gathering.?Once the details have been clarified, the next step is to match and customize existing services to best meet individual clients.

It’s like a baseball pitcher aiming for the catcher’s mitt, following the catcher’s signals and directions.

Based primarily, if not exclusively, on what you can do, pitching standard services pays little, if any, attention to individual clients’ needs, wants and expectations.

This approach is like throwing the ball how and where you think best … because it’s your best pitch.

17. Prospecting For Leads

Prospecting for leads is about finding potential clients for your services.

Based on the mining model of searching for precious metals, the process involves hunting high and low for anyone who might be interested in hiring you.?

Once warm leads have been discovered, the next step is to pitch standardized services.

Apart from the pitching issue, the biggest problem with prospecting for leads is that you are looking for real live people…not inanimate precious metals.

And individuals cannot be processed into clients as systematically as raw ore can become valuable commodities.

If you are looking for new clients, attracting ideal clients is a whole lot better than prospecting for so-so leads.

18. Schmoozing As Networking

Without a doubt, networking can and does generate a huge volume of new business.

Typically, this new business comes in the form of referral, either as a result of network contacts referring ?third parties, or self-referral, ?in which individual contacts hire you for your help.

If existing clients are included in the networking event, as a result of seeing you again, they might choose to return for repeat service, another major source of new business.

Equally without a doubt, networking in the form of schmoozing probably wastes more time than any other business activity.

By way of clarification, schmoozing is idle conversation and chatter about anything and everything, large and small. Certainly it plays an important role in building rapport and relationships.

But in the place of focused networking, it can waste a whole of time for many people.

19. Self-Serving Storytelling

Storytelling in business is?the process of telling a story, rather than listing facts, when communicating with current or potential clients.

It helps us stand out from our competitors as well as provide our audience with a storyline in which they will remember us.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that for too many people, storytelling is little more than another platform for bragging, exaggerating or lying about the benefits of their services, mindlessly pitching their services or any other form of shameless self-promotion.

The best stories can help potential clients understand how you can help them.

The worst stories do little more than stroke the teller’s ego.

20. Stop Learning

As much as I dislike clichés and catch phrases, there is one tired old quote that totally resonates with me whenever I hear it.

Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, was bang on when he said: "change is the only constant in life."

That reality is as true today as it was more than 2600 years ago.

About the only difference is that’s rate of change can be somewhat mind-boggling.

For whatever reason, whether by deliberate decision or default, many people stop learning at some point in their lives. ?Sure they may reluctantly learn what they need to know in order to use the latest electronic device or software application.?

But for the most part it’s same old, same old … for as long as possible.

In today’s quickly changing and evolving world, there is no better way to get left behind and become irrelevant than to stop learning.

What’s Your Experience?

Based on your experience both as a service-provider and a consumer of services, which of the above five practices has been most common?

As a service-provider, which do you think is most problematic for purposes of generating more new business??Why?