Tom Martin
“We live in a digitally centric world where self-educated buyers talk to Google rather than you or your sales team, allowing them to remain invisible until they turn off their Romulan cloaking device, raise their hand and alert you to their presence as a possible new client,” says author Tom Martin.
If you missed the sci-fi geek allusion, in 1966 the TV show Star Trek introduced the Romulan species and their spaceship stealth technology, which was inspired by those World War II submarine movies like Run Silent, Run Deep.
A nice analogy for those stealthy prospects of yours. Martin says research shows that over 70% of prospective clients self-educate before contacting any firm.
“This fundamentally alters the traditional approach to business development, especially for a company or individual selling professional services based on intellectual capabilities,” says Martin, author of The Invisible Sale.
In another sci-fi reference, Martin dubs these self-educators as the invisible sales prospects, another great literary allusion.
An iconic character from the father of science fiction, The Invisible Man is an 1897 novel by H. G. Wells. The title character is a scientist who devotes himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's reflection of light.
“Thus, today’s successful professional services business development programs should focus more on capturing that activity by becoming known for knowledge versus creating activity via those increasingly ineffective cold outreach activities—cold calling, cold emailing, and cold networking—that make most of us feel like sleazy used car salesmen,” says Martin.
Surely everyone gets the sleazy used car salesman allusion.
“Instead of blindly reaching out in hopes of catching a prospective client’s attention and convincing them to take a meeting, invest that time in creating thoroughly helpful cornerstones—long-form content that answers the most common questions your prospects ask,” says Martin.
Martin is an award-winning ad agency executive whose innovative business development programs have generated tens of millions of dollars in new client billings. He is the founder of Converse Digital.
Here are three steps from Martin to improve prospecting:
Leave bread crumbs for Google. “Post that SEO-optimized cornerstone content on your website where Google can find it and use it to answer those questions your prospects ask Google,” says Martin.
Next, deconstruct that cornerstone content into multiple cobblestones. “The cobblestone content answers a specific question your prospects ask or solves a common challenge—and spread those cobblestones liberally over the internet, at conferences, or via emails and social media posts, where prospective clients can and will find, consume and then follow them like a yellow brick road back to your website where they can convert into new, qualified leads for you or your firm,” says Martin (a nice hat-trick allusion from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz).
But don’t make the mistake of trying to close the deal immediately. “Forget about closing a potential transaction and focus on creating a connection with the prospect,” says Martin. “Seek common ground or interests on which you build the foundation for an authentic, trust-based relationship. Put the prospect’s interests first, even if that means you end up referring them to another person or firm.”
Bottom line: Martin says these approaches will lead to a conversion, either as a new client today or perhaps tomorrow, when the firm they do hire doesn’t work out because the prospect discovers that the firm only cares about transactions. And nobody wants to feel like a transaction.
