Acquiring New Business – Lead Generation Fundamentals…..

Pick a service business, any business, and ask yourself what all of the successful models have in common.  The business you pick could be a home cleaning service, pet grooming, machinery maintenance,  document courier, or business training and coaching.  It doesn’t matter, one common thread of success for them is there is a defined process for contacting and acquiring new business.  Treasure your core current clients because they pay the bills, but have an intentional, structured, and dedicated process for replacing the clients that blow away with the winds of change.

Architects want to design, Realtors want to sell, and Coaches want to coach and that is good.  They take pride in their customer care, their integrity and their quality of work, but folks, without people to serve, there is no need for your service.   An email came in the other day from a guy who said he wanted to know what business development processes were working without getting another lecture on getting on the phones.  That’s like asking the orthodontist how to get pretty straight teeth without giving you a lecture on braces.

People get so dialed into the technical aspects of their craft, that they see prospecting as being beneath them.  They want and see themselves in front of  the room empowering the masses with their pearls of wisdom and that might be how it works in the movies.  It doesn’t work that way in real life, at least not initially.   Cold calling as a form of acquiring new business is too often perceived as a job for rookies.  Truth is, cold calling is a fundamental skill of any service business, and is relevant up to the CEO.  Effective and efficient prospectors deserve a place at the top of the food chain not the bottom because they generate business.  It is not glamorous, it is not easy, and the gratification is not immediate, but phone time for acquiring new business is a vital fundamental of any business.