Iâm a fan of Zig Ziglar. He has had a huge influence on how people do sales. His philosophy and approach focused on relationship building and customer service.
If youâre doing sales as one small piece of your full day as a new services business owner, or if youâre working in sales exclusively, check out what he had to say.
One thing he was a big proponent of was selling to your close friends and family. And if youâre not comfortable doing that, you need to reexamine what you’re selling to make sure you really believe in it.
Last week in the newsletter, I talked about the differences between a lead and a prospect. All prospects are leads, but not all leads can be prospects. The key, fundamental difference is that prospects have: (1) The need, (2) The desire, and most importantly (3) The financial capacity to implement the decision.
Identifying who is really a prospect among your leads is called qualification. Thatâs not really what Iâm going to talk about here. I will come back to that topic later.
By now, hopefully, youâve got your business off the ground by doing great work for every friend and family member that needs what you do. Youâve done the jobs and been paid, maybe at a slightly discounted friends and family rate, and youâve exhausted all those opportunities. (And if you havenât done that⌠do it now! Itâs the best place to start.) What do you do now?
Ask those same friends and family for prospect referrals.
âAn addition to offering your services to close friends and relatives is that they will have a serious interest in your success and will be delighted to open doors for you to the best prospects of all.â (Ziglar, 2013)
From a high-level, hereâs what Ziglar recommends:
- Ask for help. Approach different friends and family members youâve worked with and ask if they will help. Similar to not selling your services to friends and family, which many people donât do, this is a big missed opportunity. If you donât ask for help, youâre not going to get it.
- Ask for the introduction. Once youâve found some friends and family who are willing and eager to help you build your business, also ask if they are willing to make some introductions for you.
- Get a list of names. Now itâs time to sit down or do a video call and get specific about who they know thatâs in the market for the services you sell. Get the names first. Donât get into details yet. Just work on identifying the names. Once you have all the names, gather more details for each, such as contact details.
- Ask which ones to contact first. And then start qualifying.
- âOnce youâve got your prospects, ask the âreferrerâ to whom you should call on first, and work with the client to establish a priority list for your names. You will also obtain some âqualifyingâ information (knowledge about the prospectâs ability to buy).â (Ziglar, 2013)
- Keep your friend or family member updated on whatâs going on.
- âKeeping satisfied clients informed is good public relations and good selling, and it makes good sense.â (Ziglar, 2013)
You can learn more in his book.
After going through this process with a handful of friends and family youâve worked for, you now have a highly qualified list of prospects. And great people to refer them to you.
You could get introductions via text or phone, then call your new prospects. Or you can use Quote Cactus. Here is how:
- Add the prospects youâve collected.
- But ask your friend or family to let them know youâll be reaching out first!
- Theyâll be asked to explicitly opt in, so itâs less of a bother, and youâll only be talking to those who are willing to help you out.
- Reach out to your new prospects via messages. Work on getting to know them, ask the right questions, and really get to know them. The good thing is, all this is happening in one place for many prospects at once.
- Once theyâre ready to talk specifics, send them an estimate to start the conversation about their project.
The best thing about this approach is that once youâve built a solid customer base, you can repeat this process regularly to identify more prospects to talk to. But the key is doing good work, providing good customer service, and, through that trust, developing a relationship with clients who are ready and willing to help you out.
