Dave Harries: Grant, one of the questions I hear a lot when I’m networking and out there with small businesses and new businesses and things like that, is how do I get new prospects? That’s a big question obviously, but I wonder, without trying to boil the ocean, what would be your advice if a customer said that to you?
Grant Leboff: Like you said, it’s a huge question. Just two things I’d say that I think are really important. One is; think about where your prospects hang out and then make sure you’re in the same places, which kind of sounds obvious, but think about online. If your prospects are all midwives, do they all belong to the Royal College of Midwives? Could you do something for that website? Are there forums that they ask each other questions on?
So it’s just thinking about whether it’s online or offline. So offline – obviously the events and things like that. Where are the places that they hang out? And that’s really, really important to start to think about because sometimes people just swimming in the wrong places. I think it’s less of a mistake ‘live’ because, you know… you go to an event, and none of your prospects are there!. But I think on-line, sometimes people put investment into forums and platforms where really, their customers aren’t around. So that’s one answer that I think that you should really think about.
And the second one is, if I’m playing in those platforms, how do I give value to those customers or those prospects and make myself really interesting and someone was speaking to. Because, with lead generation, you either bash down the door – you make cold calls – or you need to make yourself attractive.
One of the things you can do to make yourself attractive is; can I give this particular audience, this particular market segment value? Which means that they will want to have more conversations with me.
Dave Harries: And do you think, when one is looking for prospects, should you always be thinking, ohh that person might be a customer. Should that be an obsession, or should you just think, well, a prospect’s, a prospect, we’ll see what happens, let’s just get the relationship going.
Grant Leboff: I think it’s the latter. But I think again, one of the things that people get wrong is their targeting and segmentation. So I think it’s true of any business, maybe even more acute for a small business, with very limited time and budget and everything else is; do I really understand my target market and the segmentation behind that market? And then am I playing in the right places? Because if I’m playing in those right places, then I can be, as you explained, a little bit more casual – let’s put it that way – because actually I’m going to generate lots of opportunities and have lots of the right types of conversations.
I think when people get very nervous and then they blow it, is when an opportunity comes along and that’s a sign that they’re not getting enough. Because when you become very precious about one particular opportunity – okay, there’s exceptions, when something’s like a major opportunity – but often it’s just because ‘I don’t have enough opportunities’ so when one comes along I’m almost duty bound, so nail that business, otherwise I’m going to be in trouble. If I have enough, I can be a little bit more casual.
Dave Harries: Yes, the digital marketing, obviously you’ve mentioned that it’s clearly important to be there in that online space playing in the right places, but what about the face to face? The sort of, more traditional networking, should one do both?
Grant Leboff: Yeah. I think inevitably it’s a blend of both. I don’t think it’s either one nor the other. The obvious things to say are well, do what works for your business. Do your ROI, measure your return on the efforts you’re putting in and what works best for you. I think inevitably, if you just look at the trend of buying journeys – buying journeys are going more online – which is kind of obvious because if you think; if you need a supply of anything, you can sit at home on your tablet or your laptop or whatever and you can cover an awful lot of ground, relatively quickly, from your desktop or whatever, much more than you can when you start walking around and popping into shops or whatever else. So buying journeys, B2B and B2C are migrating more and more online.
So I think it’s almost not an option for a company not to have an online presence, and a good one, but then yes, there may well be exhibitions or events or networking forums or conferences that, for your particular industry, you want to have a presence at, and perhaps you should.
