The last blog post talked about how limited beliefs will hold you back from marketing and business development success. As you know, just like everything else in life, the biggest obstacle to success is our own belief systems.
This was brought home to me when I recently spoke to a lawyer who was feeling rejected due to his marketing efforts and a guy I met yesterday at a CLE class who recently lost his job. Both had made overtures to various prospects and employers but they were not getting any response.
So rather than continue to feed those prospects with good market data that shows they had the solutions to the prospect’s problems, they stopped following up. We all suffer from this type of thinking. (My dating life when I was single is a testament to this.) No one likes to be rejected and no one wants to be a pain in the ass or appear desperate.
I have a friend who practices health care law and a few years ago he targeted a new health care system that had just consolidated. He wrote to the General Counsel and got no response. Undaunted, he continued to write and send market based data that would help the General Counsel do his job better and be more successful. This process went on for 2 years without a response, until one day he got a call and was asked to come in to discuss one of the articles he had sent. The GC admired his persistence and even commented on how his current lawyer failed to advise him of this important information.
He now represents the health care system and his revenues from that particular client are substantial. Moreover, the GC introduced him to other attorneys and business executives in the healthcare field and he was able to generate referrals and new clients.
If you provide prospects with valuable market information, rather than product information about how great you are, people will respond and not feel that you’re annoying or desperate.
The only question is how much do you want their business and how persistent are you?
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