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Building Powerful Relationships With Your Prospects

Guest post by: Jessica Swanson

Article Overview: Most small business owners expect their prospects to commit to a serious relationship with them before they even know them. However, before your prospect makes a commitment, they want to get to know you. Here are ways to accomplish this.

Building Powerful Relationships With Your Prospects

I have a very strange question to ask you. Do you believe in dating someone before you get married? My guess is that you're rolling your eyes and saying, "Of course, you should date before you get married! Are you crazy?"

The reason I ask this seemingly bizarre question is because most small business owners expect their prospects to commit to a serious relationship with them before they even know them. Think about it for a minute.

Most small business owners put up their company website and wait for the prospects to start pouring in the door. If prospects land on the website, that same small business owner expects the customer to simply shell over their hard-earned money instantly.

The problem is that it just doesn't work like that. Customers want to get to know you before they commit. They need to trust you, like you and understand you. It's really no different than marriage.

Research suggests that customers need to connect with you an average of seven to twelve times before they are ready to take out their wallet and spend money to do business with you. In all reality, your customer is going to do business with you when they are ready to do business with you.

That means that we need strategies to connect with our prospects in a multiple of different ways. We want to be a constant reminder to our customers that when they are ready to buy we are there to support them. The only way this can be accomplished is by continuing to build a meaningful relationship with our prospects.

The good news is that this is not a daunting task. In fact, much of the connections with your prospects can be accomplished through the power of automation.

Here is an example of how I "woo" my prospects and develop a serious relationship with them.

First of all, through my various marketing efforts, they arrive at my landing page. My landing page is designed with one purpose in mind. Mainly, I want my prospect to feel safe, secure and begin the process of "getting to know me." I am not expecting a sale on the first encounter.

In addition, I offer my prospects free and valuable information that allows them to get to know me. If my prospect feels comfortable with my capture page, they supply me with their name and email. This is where the relationship begins and the real automation kicks in.

Once I have a prospect's information, I connect with them in a number of ways:

• Email autoresponder messages that are sent out automatically;
• Videos for my prospect to watch;
• Podcasts and audio reports to listen to;
• Special reports that I have written that highlight my industry;
• A chance to subscribe to my blog and learn more about shoestring marketing;
• Initiations to special webinars or teleseminars that I host.

Naturally, there are dozens of other ways that you can connect with your prospects and begin to build powerful relationships. Let your imagination be your guide.

Most importantly, you must give your prospects many different ways to connect with you and to begin building that incredibly valuable relationship. Because once they feel a strong connection with you, they usually end up making that commitment.

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Article Tags: marketing, relationship marketing, small business marketing



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