Let's face it, we waste the most amount of time on the least motivated prospects. They take up all of our time, string us along for weeks, if not months, and that's if we can even track them down in the first place!
The problem is usually two-fold: 1) bad data and a messy CRM, and 2) not knowing which prospects to focus on!
So, here we're going to tear it down and help you get organized so that you can stop wasting time on the least valuable prospects and start spending more time building relationships and closing deals!
What information should I have on my prospecting list?
CRMs used to be a place where you could look up information about your customers or prospects to store it all. They were basically glorified Excel spreadsheets with bells and whistles.
During the dark-ages of the CRM, all you needed to have was a name, title, company, address, phone number, email. And that's usually why most people never used them! After all, we had most of that information in our phones or on a mailing list. So, all you really needed was:
- Name (separated by first and last)
- Phone (separated by landline and mobile)
- Address (separated by street, city, state, and zip)
Fast forward to the days of AI-driven marketing automation, big data, Machine Learning, and any other buzz words that you can throw at marketing and the possibilities of what you can do with your CRM is endless.
What can I do with data?
Send a holiday card? ✅
Promote a new offer or deal? ✅
Send an entirely customized 3-touch campaign spanning direct mail, email, and text message that automatically goes out to thousands of potential customers? Yup - it can do that too! ✅ ✅ ✅
And that's why now, more than ever, having a clean and structured database with accurate and consistent information is so important.
How do I get that kind of data?
The good news is that the data is out there, you just have to find it. Now here are the choices, you can spend hours on the internet, pay a VA to look it up, or find a service like Scout to enrich your contacts for you.
The key is that the data needs to be consistent! Remember, all the data in the world is useless if it's not formatted in a way that you can use it! So, make sure that your lists have the same columns, the same data points, can be used when you're sending out your marketing and is formatted the same way.
Now that you've got your data, you can do two things that you really weren't able to before; 1) filter down which leads actually fit your Ideal Customer Profile; and 2) build a PERSONAL marketing campaign that you can send to hundreds, if not thousands of your ideal customers. Time saved ⏰. Mission accomplished ✅.
Comments