Attracting the Right Prospects Every Day
Here’s a simple model to methodically organize yourself to attract the best, highest potential prospects and monetize your relationships with them on a continuing bases.
First, determine who your best customers are. Who has the most money and the most motivation to invest in your value proposition? They will be in categories D and E on the Market Value Bell Curve, below: serial developers and total immersion people (“hand tens”). You are better off with a small target audience of these highly qualified buyers than a huge list of irrelevant people toward the center and left.
Second, use Market Gravity to attract these people to your offerings. There should be at least four or five gravity “spokes” that you can employ with great effectiveness. Direct your gravity efforts toward those on the right side of the bell curve.
Third, use the gravity to draw buyers to a comprehensive Accelerant Curve, where there are low barriers to entry but also the opportunity to use your services immediately on a high fee, low labor intensity basis. Maintain “vault items” which you uniquely possess. Build the Accelerant Curve by constantly producing intellectual property and creating thought leadership.
You can find more detailed descriptions of these steps on this blog, on my website, in my workshops, and in my books and CDs. The key is to clearly identify your best prospects, attract them, and then incorporate them into an increasingly intimate set of offerings.
You might call this the “unified field theory” of successful marketing in consulting.
© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.
David Dwyer
What i like about the model is it gets you focused on your best prospects from the perspective of getting the job and getting paid, with emphasis I suppose on getting paid properly (ie a higher rather than lower amount) after all motivated prospects with money and issues they want resolved aare better than fencesitters who don’t have the money anyway.
I have only skim read this but I can allready see how it works and I will make my own up based on that model.
Simma
This is amazingly clear, and will make it easier for me to prioritize what I need to do the rest of the year as I prepare for success in. 2012.
It’s already save me time and energy, and helped me let go of extraneous “task,” work that I almost started until I saw this.
Thx,
Simma
Dave Gardner
Alan…fantastic! I would appreciate additional insights from you.
(1) Are “serial developers” slightly less-inclined to “let it all hang out” than the “hang tens” and merely have a slightly lower propensity to adopt leading edge or innovative ideas than the “hang-tens?”
(2) Also, are there well-known firms you would cite as “serial developers” and “hang tens?”
(3) Is a firm that is #1 in its industry likely to be either a “serial developer” or a “hang ten?” What about a firm that is #2 in its industry–where are they likely to be pegged?
(4) Would you expect consultants to have a faster closing cycle with “hang tens” than with “serial developers?”
(5) Does being a “serial developer” or “hang ten” have more to do with company culture than market position?
All the best…Dave
Alan Weiss
1. Yes, that’s why they’re not in the next category.
2. That depends on your market. When I was primarily an OD consultant, Merck and HP were “Hang Tens.” JPMorgan/Chase and State Street Bank were Serial Developers.
3. Depends on the industry. There isn’t necessarily a one-to-one correlation. Depends on risk-taking, residual talent, top leadership, etc.
4. Of course.
5. Yes, particularly key leaders.
Keith McLeod
Alan:
Your written materials provide sustaining value, and your visuals are immediately grasped and appreciated. They are pure magic. Others may insist you think outside the box; but I believe you step outside, turn the box over and stand on top of it. Yes the air is rare up there but it provides you a greater view and perspective. Thanks for sharing your expanding universe.
Keith McLeod, CBI, SAC
Dave Gardner
Thanks, Alan, for your responses.