Drumming Up Business In A Famine

What do you do when your whale of a client does a free willy on you and you’re left searching for work?

How far would you go for a new client? What would you do?

Nick and I tackled this question on a recent episode of πŸ’Έ Make Money Online: Episode 65: How to Fill Your Client Pipeline (and What to Focus on This Month) πŸ’£.

So, let’s talk about it. You wake up and That Email has arrived and

“We’re winding down this project in the next week to focus on other strategic priorities”

is sitting on top of your morning bowl of oatmeal.

You need clients. You need clients fast. Your pipeline has been empty because, well, they’ve been a major client and as far as you knew they’d be a major client for another 6-12+ months.

But sometimes you wake up and, whelp, that’s the way it is.

So What Do You Do

Okay, so, first, what’s, historically, been your conversion rate? If you talk to 10 prospects, how many turn into proposals? How many turn into paying clients? (If you don’t know this, you should calculate it for your last 90-days – consider a prospect anyone who applied to work with you or that you had a phone call with about a project).

Second, how much is an average project worth to you? Third, how much money do you need this month? Next month?

The answer to those questions gives you an idea of how many people you need to talk to:

  • Conversion Rate β€” 1/10 prospects you talk to turn into paying projects
  • Project Value β€” $2,000
  • Money β€” You need $2,000 this month and $4,000 next month.

Okay, so, you’d need +1 project this month and +2 projects next month. At a 10% conversion rate, you need to talk to 10 prospects for this month and 20 prospects for next month.

It’s A Numbers Game

Talk to 10 prospects and, on average, you’ll get a paying project. So, we need to feed in ‘prospects’ in order to get out ‘projects.’

There’s a lot of ways that people will say to feed in the prospects. You don’t want to use SEO, Social Media, or Paid Advertising for this. Instead, you want to use Outreach Marketing to reactivate the existing relationships you already have.

Who To Contact

There are three categories of people you want to contact:

  • Current clients, to see if you can do anything to help them grow their business
  • Β Past clients, to see if they need any additional projects
  • Lost leads, to see if β€” while you didn’t end up working together before β€” they need help now

You can add referrals (kaidavis.com/getting-clients-referrals/) into the mix if you want to.

Make a list of your current clients. Make a list of your past clients for the last 3/6/12 months. Make a list of the lost leads you talked wth for the last 3/6/12 months.

This is your outreach list.

Now, you email these people.

Present them with value. Ask them about their business. Ask them if they need any help growing their business. Don’t make this about you, make this about them and their business.

It’s a numbers game. And the easiest prospects to email are those three categories above: current clients, past clients, and lost leads. Follow-up with them.

You don’t need stellar positioning for this. You just need to put in the time to email people and follow-up.

If you want to get better at emailing people and getting a reply, then you should invest in The Outreach Blueprint (http://outreachblueprint.com) to learn how to send emails that people want to receive.