The Lifewriting Professional Article -- Suspects & Prospects: Clients in the Making

Suspects & Prospects: Your Marketing Pipeline, Part II

Take the mystery out of marketing--it's not magic, it's the measurable result of relentless outreach!

Marketing is not rocket science. In many ways, it is an intuitive process that is constantly in need of a "reality check" from the numbers (ultimately of dollars) it generates. Your outreach is successful not because anyone says you have a beautiful brochure or great web site, etc. Marketing is successful when it brings in enough paying clients.

The pipeline metaphor is a useful in understanding marketing. "Pipeline" suggests in one end and out the other; it captures the sense of flow from possibility to conclusion; it also suggests a process taking place--a process you must understand and learn to control if you are to generate paying clients.

The number of people who go on to become paying clients is much smaller, of course, than the number who inquire. People at the inquiry stage are either suspects or prospects. You need lots of both in order to have enough who move on to the paying client stage of your pipeline.

>>Filling the pipeline can take years. That's right: YEARS. (It's daunting but true: an "overnight success" is often years in the making.) How do you fill your pipeline and keep it flowing?--through your marketing outreach.

Don't let the simplicity of this truth escape you: paying clients won't find you unless you do the work to make yourself known! It's not because your service or product is great that people find you. It's because you publicize your work through effective outreach!

There are several layers of outreach. One is general outreach: at this level, your goal is to create awareness. At your best, you do this on a continuous and consistent basis.

General outreach includes the profile article in the local newspaper, your participation on a panel at the library, your pertinent letters to the editor, listings of your schedules in calendars of events, networking at a business breakfast, putting up (and maintaining) a web site. Together these add up to informing the public of your existence. Awareness of your services begins to build. While general outreach does not contain a call to action, it often leads to inquiries. When people contact you as a result of your general outreach, they enter your pipeline. Some people who enter your pipeline only want general info while others are ready to hire help for their memoir project. In a nutshell, these are your suspects and prospects.

Suspects are far from ready to buy. As suspects, of course, some people legitimately want information about the feasibility of a memoir project and about you as a professional. They aren't ready to buy--but perhaps they will be someday. A second level of outreach is targeted to them: a newsletter like this one is a good way to keep alive your connection with them, to remind them that you will be there when they're ready, to reiterate your products/services, and to establish that you are, indeed, who they are looking for. It's important to have clear, concise response materials and an efficient "keep in touch" system for suspects to help them become prospects.

But some suspects will never become prospects. They also want information but not to be better able to decide on which of your products or services to purchase--no! they want free info in order to do the work (or just think about doing it!) on their own. Here's a "red flag" to identify these non-paying non-prospects: they call repeatedly with "just one more question"--seeming like potential clients, they use your time and energy and keep you from your real work. (As a general rule, two, possibly three, phone or e-mail contacts are more than enough for a suspect to either make a purchase or decide against purchasing. When you indulge a suspect in more contacts than that, you're doing free coaching. If your work is a business not a hobby, you cannot afford to be unaware of this. There may well be clients whom you want to be generous with, people whose stories really resonate with you, people whose projects are exciting and creative for you--save your generosity for them. Don't squander it on strangers who will never become clients at all.)

Another group of suspects is those who either cannot afford your products/services or they cannot make the emotional commitment to their project which a purchase implies. You cannot change these factors. Only they can do so. You must take care to be economical with your contact time at the suspect stage. You need a lot of suspects if you're going to have enough clients--because most suspects will never become paying clients. You can easily impoverish yourself (and possibly destroy your company) by devoting too much time to individual suspects. Instead, keep your marketing focus on mass contact. Develop generic materials that will speed your response materials to larger numbers of suspects. And give those who will become prospects, then clients, the opportunities to identify themselves.

A prospect is someone who is willing and ready to be convinced to make a purchase. They may be suspects who are ready to move on to the next stage in the pipeline (because of your continued, effective outreach) or people who come right into the pipeline ready to make a purchase. For this, you must create occasions for them to purchase.

To reach people who are ready to be prospects, you use the same media as for suspects--with this difference: add a call to action. Your upcoming income event such as a workshop registration deadline, a "sale" on existing products, or a direct invitation to become a paying client provides the moment of decision for this prospect. (By the way, some prospects will drift away just because you never pop the question! You can be sure someone else will reap the benefit of the work you have put in to get them ready to purchase--someone who is willing to ask them to act!)

One way to tell if people are prospects is if they are willing to give you their names, addresses, and phone numbers. If an inquirer won't do this, s/he is a suspect not a prospect.

All businesses thrive or fail on their ability to attract suspects who become first prospects and then paying customers. Keep tabs on your numbers of each and where these people are in your pipeline. It will help you to assess whether the outreach you generate is effective--is it producing numbers that will lead you to good times or to poverty?! Dismal numbers ought to prompt you to take immediate marketing action.

These topics are crucial to your awareness of your marketing health. I'll continue to share what I have learned about the process in this newsletter. By the way, my Business Supports Seminar TeleClass is a 15-week lab in which you can encounter and practice these and other marketing and business shaping fundamentals such as cross-selling and up-selling--two ways you can maximize the rewards of the hard work you have done to transform suspects into prospects into clients.

Stay tuned--and keep marketing!

The Business Support Seminar--15 weeks of hands-on biz planning for and with creative people like yourself. Read about it