Going Under the Hood Pt. 2 | Your Potential Clients

by Hassan del Campo, Social Mediums

In this part deux I look at Twitter, Email Marketing, and “Warm” Calling

• Twitter doesn’t have to be just a platform to promote or get up-to-the-minute news bites. It’s also a strong platform for prospecting and making genuine connections. Often your clients will not have a presence on all the major social platforms, so it’s important to expand your marketing efforts to the platforms where your target audience congregates. In the past, we’ve used Twitter to make connections that have even led to contracts or some other mutually-benefiting outcome.
  • Do a weekly rundown of who followed you and make note of accounts that pique your interest, could be potential clients, potential influencers, or anyone of value.
  • Create private, segmented lists to which you assign specific users, as you come across them or when you perform your weekly rundown. Examples of lists are Competitors, Prospects, Influencers, Potential Partners, Los Angeles, Bay Area, etc. The more specific the category the more useful.
  • Monitor your lists and the activity. Make sure to engage with target audience with regular comments, retweets, and favorites. Once you’ve nurtured these prospects for some time you can begin to be more direct with your communication.
• Identify your business persona – “Personas are fictional, generalized characters that encompass the various needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns among your real and potential customers. They help you understand your customers better. ” – HubSpot‘s Make My Persona tool helps you create your own persona through quick and easy steps. Developing specific personas for your particular business is an important step in qualifying leads and audiences for your product or service. If you don’t have a clear vision for the type of person you need to reach, your marketing efforts will be all for naught.
• Track when your emails are opened – Chrome’s Email Tracker is a browser extension that tracks emails sent from Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook,  Yahoo, and others. The free version will alert you when and if your email recipient opens your email and how many times. The paid version (which is very cheap) offers additional features, such as what links within the body of your email, that the recipient clicked. HubSpot has a version that comes equipped with powerful tools integrations – for a fee. While we’re on the topic of emailing prospects, HubSpot offers a free certification in Email Marketing. Prospecting clients through email is still a highly effective method of obtaining new business. Before you hit submit, make sure you brush up on common practices that will see that your emails are as effective as possible.
• Now that you’re set up to send and receive emails that you can track and measure, make sure you can email the appropriate person. Hunter.io is another browser extension that allows you to retrieve professional emails from contacts that important to your business. Sometimes you just really, really need to send the CEO of Luna Microsystems a case study but her name is not listed on the company website or LinkedIn. This is where Hunter comes in handy. 
• Listen to yourself – One of my most surprising revelations came from a voice recorded call I had with a recent prospect. Several months ago I downloaded a Call Recorder app to record my business-related phone calls. Often I would be on the phone and the client would rattle off specific instructions and vital information that I needed to capture. While I always keep a pen and pad with me during calls, having a voice recorder was a backup. I’d get the client’s permission to record the call, explain why I record, and then commence the call. Two things would happen; I never reviewed the phone calls. In fact, since the app starts automatically and runs “silently” I would forget that the call was ever being recorded in the first place. Until one day I needed to review a call to draft a contract for a new partnership. I plugged my headphones in, went through the archive and tapped the ‘play’ button. I was mortified. Up until that moment I had always felt confident and at ease on the phone. The recording gave me a different impression. After counting the fifth umm and ugh I couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped listening. I didn’t sound like the head of a company talking confidently about the value my services rendered. I sounded a little unpolished and passive. My start was good, but it quickly nose-dived afterward and I lost control of the conversation. Amazingly, I still won the business – but I wasn’t satisfied in my execution of the sale. What’s scary is that I made at least 10 to 15 more calls after that event and before I came to this realization. Create and refine a small library of natural-sounding scripts. Record yourself. Fix what you can do better. Rinse and repeat.