Ways to stay top of mind as a small business
[This is a version of an article originally written for The Portfolio Collective about portfolio careers]
It’s arguably harder than ever to stand out in the modern world; not only does the average person consume about 74GB of information per day (the equivalent of 16 movies) but a lot of it is very similar and they forget most of it by the next day.
This proves particularly challenging when it comes to the business world, where effectively many people are trying to ‘sell’ to the same people, bombarding them with info about their products and services; that wouldn’t really be an issue were it not for the fact that many of these individuals would be your perfect ‘clients’.
Think how much spam you receive each week through a variety of channels and how you react to it; now imagine how much that might be for a senior individual who might be a prospective client.
No wonder you don’t get a response to that friendly email you send them!
A bit about me — why should you listen to my views on the topic?
I know that scenario very well because 4 years ago I departed from the employed world and boldly decided to start my own consulting business; no response from prospective clients was pretty much what I experienced the first 12 months I tried to make any sales [admittedly Covid didn’t help].
Having previously spent 12 years in the Consulting industry working for big firms, I had always had a big brand behind me and that was a major factor in getting clients’ attention (be it for sales or anything else).
The day I walked away from a big firm, that all changed.
Although I set up my own company (rather than initially acting as a freelancer), quite simply, no one was googling my business and nobody really gave a damn about what I had to offer.
Like it or not, I had to emotionally get to grips with that and refine a process of how to get through to my target clients, otherwise my little business would be going nowhere fast.
What did I do?
I cringe, when I look back at my first year of business. Not only was I targeting the wrong people but my approach was to rely on too many emails and to be too pushy in my attempts to land work.
It didn’t matter that the people I was emailing were a mix of friends, former clients who had wished me well on setting up my business and former colleagues who had promised to work with me.
At the end of the day, there was limited work forthcoming.
The words of a friend (a former two-time, successful CEO) come to mind; he left his last company to set up his own Coaching firm and I met him one year into his journey. His experience was tough:
“For 10 years [as CEO], I could pick up the phone to a range of people across the industry and they would answer within seconds. Now, when I ring or email those same people, they just ignore me”
And that is the honest truth!
How did I go about changing that?
Fast forward to today and my business has 32 clients that include the likes of Amazon, Heineken, Marks and Spencer, Anglo American, the NHS and more; not only that but I regularly get asked to give talks and presentations about how I win work.
It’s still early days but, thanks to our refined approach, about 10% of our company’s work comes from in-bound and referrals rather than solely relying on me knocking on doors [I am still the sole business development individual].
What I do today is night and day from where I started and a lot of that came from refining my process.
I still do a lot of outbound and broadly my approach looks like this:
· I extensively use voice notes every day to reconnect and maintain contact with prospective clients
· I post every day on LinkedIn
· I guest on 2–3 podcasts a week
· I write a weekly blog
· I send an annual start of year email to all contacts
· I give talks around London and at events (online and in-person) to raise the company’s profile
· I attend 1–2 networking events a week to meet new people
The net result of all this is about setting up a plethora of coffees (virtual and in-person) because coffees are what generate the work. As such I will average between 10–20 coffees per week, even on weeks that I have a lot of other commitments.
It’s not just the ‘What’ that has changed over the 4 years but also the ‘How’; the quality of my voice notes has improved, the style of my writing has changed, the explanation of our services has evolved, the pitch about the company is much sharper, the way I approach coffees is fundamentally different — all of this is for the better and it did not happen by chance.
I constantly try new things (for example, during Covid I recorded a different video every day to explain what my business did in a different way and then got friends to vote on it) and review the impact that each tweak has.
Without going into too much detail, my strategy for business development with someone new is effectively:
1. Make contact — make sure people are aware of my business and what we offer [that’s how the voice notes, talks and emails come in handy]
2. Stay in their eye line — the odds that they will want your product and service at the exact moment you contact them is slim so you need to stay top-of mind [that’s where the daily posts, blogs and podcasts come in]
3. Be approachable — you want them to feel that when they might require your product and service that they don’t hesitate in doing that [this comes from the level of authenticity and accessibility you project]
How does this apply to you?
The good news is that you don’t have to follow my exact strategy or process to be effective and stand out from the crowd however there are 3 principles that I base all my actions upon:
1. Human beings are lazy — if they have to do any work to find out about you then I assume they won’t do this; this means they won’t click on links you send, they won’t turn the sound up to watch your video, they won’t even watch your video, they won’t google you, they won’t read past page 1 of anything you send them, etc.
2. Human beings are selfish — if it’s not about them they are considerably less interested; this means they don’t care about what you offer, what you achieved, etc. They care about what’s in it for them and how their life will be easier.
3. Human beings are easily distracted — if there is something shinier out there then their attention will be drawn there instead; this means that you have to be the shiniest object at that moment in time or just hope everything else is just dull.
Drawing from this, my top 10 tips for standing out are:
· Make sure you do all the legwork — don’t rely on the other person having to do anything
· Make everything as simple to access as possible — cut down words, links, presentations, etc.
· Make sure others see themselves in any communication you make — talk about their problems rather than your solutions
· Make sure your approach is novel — swim against the tide, do something memorable, think about the thud effect (see this webinar for more on that https://youtu.be/IQAvrVMSx6o?si=qhAZMYbY3RI_NjPk )
· Make sure you are consistent– a single reach out can be easily missed so you need to be regular in what you do
· Try new things — what else could you do, don’t rest on your laurels
· Practice and refine — you will not get things right first time so keep testing and learning, particularly if your results are just not happening
· Don’t get beholden on one specific thing — somethings just don’t work out but if you dwell on it then this can have a massive impact on all the other opportunities you could pursue
· Have fun — whatever outreach activity you do, pick something that you enjoy because if you’re not having fun then this will ooze into your approach
· Try not to despair — it’s about enjoying the process as much as the destination
In Conclusion:
Standing out as a small business is tough; unless you have some miracle product, a massive budget or a fairy godmother/father [all of which highly unlikely] then to be successful you need to put in place a process that is novel, consistent and fun.
If you want some further advice then drop me a line; I’d love to swap tips on staying top of mind 🙂
Faris
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
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Ways to stay top of mind as a small business was originally published in Venture on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Originally Published on https://farisaranki.medium.com/
