Without an ongoing supply of prospects for your business, your business will slowly die out. To build your business, you need to optimize the process of prospecting, so you can focus on a profitable activity like closing sales.

Prospecting requires a plan and follow through on your part. To do it profitably, here are some tips to put into your prospecting methods.

1. Get Your Story Straight
Before you launch any advertising campaign to find prospects, make sure you have a clear view of your company’s message. If you communicate your message effectively, it tells the client how they can benefit. So, get a clear picture of your target market and the problems they are facing. Be able to explain the benefits of the solutions for the prospect. Lastly, explain why your company solutions are different from your competitors. With all of this in place, you can reassure a prospect with a strong guarantee.

Most prospects have little time and the faster you find what makes your company and solutions different than the competition, the faster the prospect becomes your client.


2. Measure The Prospecting Process.
Track your results of your current prospecting method and consider this your baseline to grow from. Try out a new method for a few weeks and measure the results. Refine the method that gave you the best results and repeat.

3. Don’t Cold Call.
You will get more prospects when you remove cold calling from your business. Nobody wants to appear desperate or to annoy prospects, so replace the time consuming and rejection building barrage with relationship building activities.

Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Edge can help. Call 772-4061 today for a meeting with our marketing and design experts that will take your business to the next level.
Check back next week for the final three steps.

Suppliers are a piece of the success puzzle. Ask them how to help your growth. It might be a new product line, payment terms or even co-op advertising.
Examine your customer. They know what they want and need, so interview them one-on-one, throw a customer/client appreciation event, have a contest, run a survey... Your next success may come from a customer who has a unique perspective of the business from their stand point.
Know why prospects do not buy. Simply ask, record and keep asking. Don’t stop until you have recorded a pattern. Once you know it, then find a way to give them what they want. Also, look at the last calendar year worth of sales. It will dictate the path for the future.
Look at where the business is making a good profit margin. Investing in your marketing budget is key. To have the concepts down on paper, but never have them given the chance to fly doesn't solve anything.
Depending on just how involved you are, it may be difficult to look objectively at its accurate state. This is a key area where Edge can help. You may be limiting the growth by missing a small component, not seeing a new niche for a product, or not capitalizing on a new target market opportunity.

The plan needs to be flexible enough that any part of it can change or take a new direction... just as our metaphor states. Bring us your plan and we'll add some marketing sizzle to it. We can get you back on the road to being an energized, dynamic business.

Are you proactive and cutting edge but your share of customers is still not growing? If you’re all that, then regardless of competition, the economy, your customers and your income statement, it is possible to reinvent or reshape your business. Whether business is booming or you're feeling the recession effects, a high Canadian dollar, or a hurting industry environment, a business owner or marketing executive should always be on the lookout for ways to improve the business.

Dust off that business development/marketing plan. It might just be time to remind yourself of the business values and objectives. You are not the same business in the same economy that you were 12 months ago. If the business is having a tough time, look around at who is doing better and find ways to recreate and improve on their model.
Set aside some time... like right now... to brainstorm ideas. Right at the start line is where Edge can conceptualize new ideas for clients.
Think big. If you sold to your city, then sell to the province. If you sold to clients in the province, then sell to the entire country. Response rates are a percentage game. Change the odds.

The plan needs to be flexible enough that any part of it can change or take a new direction... just as our metaphor states. Bring us your plan and we'll add some marketing sizzle to it. We can get you back on the road to being an energized, dynamic business.

Cutting edge, state of the art and certified. So, you’re all that? Does this mean you speak for every business sector? Not really. Large businesses leave small segments unserviced because of either time involved or the dollars involved. But many small businesses do represent profitable targets within larger industries because the small or boutique agency understands the niche market. The niche is a narrowly defined group of potential customers.
If you develop a product specifically for a particular group, or offer a service for one kind of business or only offer what you do in one geographical area, then you are a niche market business. The businesses can be small scale (to begin with) and focus on sub segments of a larger industry. But, by filling this need and concentrating on what they offer, many have become dominant within their group.
To be a success;
1. Develop a detailed marketing plan. It needs to be very specific about what you are selling, who you are selling it to, why they buy and how you will make money.
2. In the niche, find out what the consumer really values, wants and needs.
3. Market hard. The target and the channels that reach them should be closely defined. So, you need the ‘hot buttons’ for prospects that prompt them to purchase your product. The marketing campaign needs to be targeted, creative and focused on the target.

The team at Edge understands niche marketing and can build a strategic plan to use this model for your business. When you are ready to focus on a niche, email us.

There is nothing more re-inforcing to a company-customer relationship than when they use and recommend your product and/or service to another business or a trusted friend. To cement this kind of bond you:
1) Have a relationship to build on
2) Promise to deliver on a promise
3) Reputation
4) Trust
If you want to move your client from browser, to customer and lastly, to front of mind recognition, you need to have established a position of power and trust in your relationship. With this in place, customers recommend you to others and they become your core community that are both loyal and committed. These customers sign up for a newsletter and always want the inside word on your products and your website. As a powerful group of people, they become evangelists of your business and like any tidal wave, sweep momentum around any project you may be starting.
At Edge, we design and build marketing strategies that include traditional and digital media. The traditional newsletter has moved on-line as an information source for your customers. We can develop a newsletter that gets your ideas out to a large group of consumers. We see this specifically as being a proactive opportunity for branding in companies and for business associations to further its promotional role to its members.
The e-newsletter can be used to promote:
• specific association initiatives
• events
• company or association website
• member services and consumer benefits
• consumer surveys
• industry stats and news
Contact us today at Edge to meet and review your objectives for a newsletter. We can build a newsletter to achieve your maximum market potential.