REBUILDING the business while a pandemic drags on is hard.
My clients say reaching out to clients and prospects only gets them some variation of the same story: we’re not hiring.
“So…are we just supposed to sit and wait til the phone rings?”
Well, you can try. But if you’re like me, waiting will make you miserable.
Conceptually, the idea of “waiting” for anything is disempowering.
When you’re waiting for something, that means a good chunk of your power is outside of you where you have no control. You’ve attach your power – and your success – to your client’s readiness to give you a job order.
If you allow yourself to get that frustrated, you can FEEL when this power leaves. It’s an anxious place to live.
Take back your power. Bring your best self to the only thing you have control over: the here and now. This day, this hour, the next five minutes.
Think of yourself not as a salesperson but as a lead generator who will eventually win new clients with your consistent touches.
That means you have to be ok with your prospect relationships beginning as “seeds” until they’re ready to be clients.
You don’t harvest a field when YOU want to eat, you harvest a field when the crops are ready.
Power is proactive. You can’t control your client’s staffing needs but you CAN invest your energy, pretty much any moment of any day, in growing the size of your universe.
The good news if you keep doing the work is that the bigger your universe becomes, the greater the probability that some of those people WILL be ready to hire and become clients.
Focus on the leads, more affectionately known as “hiring managers with problems you can solve.” On most days, that’s the greatest and most valuable use of your time, focus and energy.
And the truth is, it TAKES a lot of focus and patience on your part to keep sending emails, calling and texting to “check in,” and pinging prospects on LinkedIn. Not “to see if it works (defined as getting a job order).” Persisting is not really an option is it? Not unless you’re just not serious about growing your business.
You MAKE it work by focusing on it until it does.
If you know your prospects have problems and you know you can offer them solutions, then it’s just a matter of time and work until you build the right bridge between those two points.
When you start working on your lead generation campaigns, know that you’ll be planting seeds for a while. Expect it to take 10+ touches before you even get their attention. But keep at it. I train people on my Breaking In touch plan every week, and they eventually break in.
So you know what you do when your sales efforts don’t work out the first time?
You hold on to your power and you try again…
