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PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

| 1 minute read

Influence - if you want to see if you are winning throw your target a ball and see if they throw it back

This is pretty obvious but in our world of creating content it is a timely reminder to ensure we are taking our prospects along a qualifying pathway so we can make sure we do not waste our time on the wrong opportunities. An important part of this is to ask those we are trying to influence to do something. To qualify their interest.  There is nothing worse than wasting time - theirs and yours.

No one piece of marketing or sales effort acts alone. I wish there were magic bullets that resulted in heaps of qualified inbound interest but there isn't. We need to write relevant content, ensure we have an interested audience, use the phone, attend conferences, breakfast briefings, drinks and award ceremonies and follow up, follow up, follow up. But this article written by author James Muir reminded me of something very important. Get those you are prospecting to do something - something that qualifies them.  

Here at Passle we ask people to sign up to our newsletter. Often on our newsletter there is a report to download, an event to attend, a survey to fill in. Those that do this are obviously to be valued and nurtured.  

In the same way as prospects are judging the sales people; sales must reciprocate -potential clients must be judged.  I am going to try to ensure I get little commitments from those I am targeting. Will let you know how I go.

A key method of testing the quality of the potential client we are in front of is asking for some form of commitment. We want to make them do something that takes a little energy to test their resolve. All too often the energy expenditure is all on the side of the salesperson. I liken this to throwing a ball to the client. If they take the effort to throw the ball back then I know they want to play ball. If they won't throw the ball back (regardless of how much we might want to play) then we know there's no game here to be played.

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Tags

content marketing, b2b marketing, james muir, newsletter, sales