In this part of the series: “How Small and Mid Sized Firms Grow” we will discuss how to prospect to increase your market share.

In order to grow one can not rely simply on their current clients to feed them more business. They need to prospect for new business. They can do this by finding new opportunities with their current clients or prospecting for new business with accounts not presently serviced.

The first step is to find other department and people with decision making authority for your service in other parts of the company that you are currently serving. Nothing works better then an internal reference and it is surprising how many people deal with one person or department within an organization, not asking their contact to help then network within that company for more business. You may have to link through several people to find the right person, but keep on plugging. You may even find that other people in your own company are trying to solicit business from your company, while you already have an in that you are not cultivating.

The next step is to determine who are prospect that you should try to do business with. The sources you can use are many, including personal contact, networking through those same contacts, using the Internet to search for companies in your line of business, in your market area, buying a contact list that are available from dozens of marketing firms, reading the newspapers and blogs to find leads, going to industry association meetings and webinars, checking back with prior clients and reactivating them, etc.

Once you have your universe of prospects you need to find out which ones are worthwhile to spend your time in cultivating. You can glean this from going back to the sources noted above and queering them as to the market potential represented by the prospects in terms of size of the company, how large they are with respect to the services that you offer, upgrading your purchased contact list to indicate market potential with your marketing niche, etc. If you can find out whose business is completely locked up and their client is totally satisfied you can eliminate those who are theoretically a great prospect, but are practically not. This is not always very easy, but necessary.

You then want to determine who may not be fully satisfied with the services they are getting, who is growing and should have needs, who is in the news or the blogosphere which can provide valuable contact tips, etc. Once you have all this information you can rank people from the highest to the lowest on the potential scale. It is then time to determine how to contact them, referral, email, telephone call, etc. and how to set yourself apart with a value proposition, but that is part of another discussion.

In our next blog we will discuss how to maximize the market value of your business.

To see all articles in this series please go to  http://optimal-mgt.com/blog.

Optimal Management is the premier management consulting company to the staffing industry. We act as mentors to owners and managers to maximize their sales, profits and value of their company. We become an extension of our clients operations and are there for all of their staffing and business needs, from sales, marketing and compensation plans, to finance, M&A, general management and everything in between.

We welcome your questions as to personal and business challenges you face in order to grow.

Who Is After Your Clients?

In this part of the series: “How Small & Mid Sized Firms Grow” we will discuss finding out who is after your clients before it is too late.

Be assured that your clients are on some one else’s prospect list if they even have the possible worth of doing business with. The more visible they are, the larger they are, the greater a target they make. So how do you find out who may be after your clients and how to you defend your turf? In blog #14 we discussed retaining your clients. In this blog we will look at this from a different perspective, that of finding out specifically who is on the hunt and setting up a proactive defense specifically for that competitor.

The first step in finding out who is going after your clients is to stay in touch with them and ask them a variety of questions such as: if they are still very satisfied with your services, do they feel that they are missing out on anything, do they feel that they are receiving a fair value for what they are paying for, and most importantly has anyone offered them something that you are not, or at a lower apparent price? If you ask this of a those people in the organization you will likely find out if you are under threat. This should be done periodically, as things change. If you are safe, that is great as your client knows that you are continuously looking to make sure they are fully satisfied with your service. If not, you now need to prod them as to who it is that is seeking to replace you. Someone at the company will share this with you if have a good relationship with them and ask the question in the right way.

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, it then becomes your job to determine the weaknesses of your adversary and counter them with your strengths to ward off any potential penetration before it starts. We can start with what might appear to be lower prices. You can hopefully demonstrate that given your in depth knowledge of your client, your prices are not only fair, but once someone else comes in there are all sorts of risks to the client by having someone unfamiliar with the account service them. And the cost of these mistakes far outweigh some fractional front end low ball price. There are dozens of other such counters you can make once you know who is going after your business and do a bit of research about them and how to best defend yourself.

Companies do not grow by ignoring the competition. It makes the best companies stronger as they must become more competitive to survive. Those who are complacent, stagnate.

In our next blog we will discuss how to prospect and increase your market share.

To see all articles in this series please go to  http://optimal-mgt.com/blog.

Optimal Management is the premier management consulting company to the staffing industry. We act as mentors to owners and managers to maximize their sales, profits and value of their company. We become an extension of our clients operations and are there for all of their staffing and business needs, from sales, marketing and compensation plans, to finance, M&A, general management and everything in between.

We welcome your questions as to personal and business challenges you face in order to grow.

In this part of the series: “How Small and Mid Sized Firms Grow” we’ll be discussing how to win over prospects.

As noted in the last blog, a person’s first priority is to retain existing clients as that is far easier then  to look for and win over someone else’s clients. You are seeking to replace someone else who is not servicing a customer as well as you can. Your job is to get them to understand what they are missing by not doing business with you.

• Get the facts by meeting with them to find out what they are getting from your competition

• Try to replace them at a lower price, or as a loss leader with gaining other business at good prices

• Find out what they are not getting from their current vendor and be able to fill that void

• Provide benefits for doing business with you, i.e. discounts and customer appreciation perks

• With this information you can justify the higher price of your services

• Create a relationship with the decision maker who you would like to do business with

• Document how you will be a profit center via increased productivity, higher quality, etc.

• Provide value added services beyond the basic services they are getting now

• Become the best vendor out there, using all of the elements noted above

• Finally, ask for the business or what you have to do for this to happen

In our next blog, we will discuss Finding out who is after your clients before it is too late.

To see all articles in this series please go to  http://optimal-mgt.com/blog.

Optimal Management is the premier management consulting company to the staffing industry. We act as mentors to owners and managers to maximize their sales, profits and value of their company. We become an extension of our clients operations and are there for all of their staffing and business needs, from sales, marketing and compensation plans, to finance, M&A, general management and everything in between.

We welcome your questions as to personal and business challenges you face in order to grow