A client of ours has been struggling to generate new business and cover payroll this year.
We have been generating leads for them and they are nearly back to a healthy place.
In 2022, a partnership ended leaving them with a sudden end to their new business source.
The founder asked me what more they could do to increase their lead conversion and close more sales.
I advised him to increase the touch points of follow up after the calls by adding a newsletter, blogs, YouTube channel and/ or an online community.
His reply to this was interesting.
“We don’t have enough resources to do that right now.”
When I quizzed him why, he explained a rather large project they were delivering which consumed his team’s time and attention.
However, the biggest surprise was that this project was quite unrelated to the services we were promoting and generating leads for.
This is a classic example of how a business grows when it grows via referred leads, rather than growing by sales and business development activities.
The analogy I like to think of is a wild animal that gets used to being hand fed.
The animal will take on a supplier of food willingly as long as the food is available just like a business can accept referred business and projects that cover a wide variety of skills and task levels.
However if that source of food is taken away, the animal is left a bit overfed, a bit out of shape and entirely unaware of how to hunt and get its own meals.
When a business is built around referred clients and projects, it can grow to a grand old size. It can hire staff and have projects on the go that match the project revenue.
However, the result is there is no margin of time or resource to invest in any lead generation, lead development or lead nurture.
The crunch comes if referred business dries up or disappears and worse, if major projects end leaving a massive gaping hole in the budget.
Suddenly the business has to start hunting and fending for itself but doesn’t know how to navigate the wild, how to isolate a target, how to approach a target, how to chase and land the target.
Building a business via cold lead generation and sales development requires a much leaner more calculated approach.
Maximum energy and time allocation is placed into hunting a specific type of lead or business that can be found and converted with relative ease and this usually requires a strong felt need, a strong desired outcome and agility on the behalf of the decision maker to invest.
This way project delivery will never take precedence over conserving enough energy to turn around and hunt the next meal.
Developing business via partnerships is an entirely valid and effective form of business generation, however remaining lean and agile is always the best and most sustainable way to grow a business.
This ensures you are always able to feed yourself and your team if the need arises.
If you would like to work on your lean, mean, lead generation machine and get your business in shape, then comment below or reply to this message and we can set up a call.
