Focus on Marketing
I had a long discussion today about which should come first.. Prospecting Skills, or Marketing. It is one of those chicken/egg questions for some but I have very strong feelings about their order of importance.
While you do need to know how to work with your customers, you have to HAVE customers first. If you are in Network Marketing and you buy customers (leads) then before you buy them, you need to know how to work with them. This in my opinion is the one time your skills are of paramount importance.
What I have found to be true with most people that I am working with is that they don’t have a source for those leads and thus the question becomes.. Where to I find the people I need to work with?
Ahhh the million dollar question. You need to generate them yourself. (Its not as easy as it sounds.) There are tons of programs out there that will generate leads for you, but you truly want to look for the one that will generate leads for YOUR market, otherwise you will spend an inordinate amount of time sifting through the unqualified ones to find the ones you need. The return on investment (ROI) is very low in this circumstance and you will work yourself to death.
Once you have found that program or system, know that once you are past the learning curve of putting it in place and getting it up and running… then you need to have the skills to work with your customers (leads).
If you are simply selling a product and have no desire to have an ongoing relationship with your customer in the way of customer support, it is not as critical to have prospecting skills unless you are hoping to use them to bring them into another opportunity or make another sale. But really, do you want just “one time only” type sales? NOOOO, you want repeat customers.
Perhaps your customer service is email or postcard based and just keeping them in the loop about improvements to your product or what you are working on next will be enough. It is much harder to get new customers than to keep the ones you have happy. In fact for every month that passes without contact from you, you loose 10% of your influence with your current customers.
Have something in place for customer retention and determine what your end goal is with your customer. Don’t fall prey to the revolving door syndrome. Develop your marketing and your prospecting skills and you will never be caught short.
P.S. To look at a system I highly recommend visit www.HoganMarketingTools.com