Secret No. 12: Are You Researching Your Prospects To Improve Your Business?

Are You Researching Your Prospects To Improve Your Business?

Focus, focus, focus.

First and foremost, focus on the potential clients to whom you want to sell your products/services and not on what you are trying to sell.

If you know who your intended clients are and you can address them directly in the headlines and body copy of your print or broadcast promotions, then this will improve the rate of response to your marketing effort.

For example, the following headlines address a target market by talking to them very specifically: “Attention Homeowners, Do You Need Extra Cash? It May Be In Your Home!” and “The Complete Sales Program for Dentists.”

In order to target your prospects well, you need to do some initial research.

Ask your prospects exactly what they want by using direct questions, client surveys, and informal studies. You could mail a questionnaire or survey to your existing clients that asks them why they do business with you.

Use their answers to direct your marketing messages to the specific wants and needs of your prospects. Target only those prospective buyers that are most qualified to purchase your products or services.

It is important to research the type of clients that make up your market and what it is that they really want. Prospects want to know what added value your company can offer them, so you must be ready to provide the reasons why they should buy from you. Your research should enable you to do this well.

The more that you know about your clients and prospects, the easier that it is to give them more than they expect. You need to gather all of the information that you can about your prospects. In order to be able to sell something to someone, you have to know how they feel, how they think, what they fear, where they live, etc. Most importantly, you need to know WHY they want to buy what you have to offer!

“A businessman’s judgement
is no better than his information.”

R. P. Lamont


Try to visualize a day in the life of your potential client.
What happens in it?
What does the person worry about?
What does s/he want?
What scares him/her?
What does s/he enjoy doing?

I could go on and on here, but you get the idea. Do your research. Ask a lot of questions. Think about and try to analyze why your clients do what they do. If you do this consistently, eventually you will begin to know why they buy from you, or why they don’t.

Start your research by asking your existing clients why they do business with you.

If you can find a way to do it, ask your former customers why they stopped doing business with you or what you could be doing to get their business back. The answers that you get can teach you an awful lot about how people perceive your business.

“Learn to ask for what you want.
The worst people can do is not give you what you asked for—which is precisely where you were before you asked.”

Peter Williams



Hopefully, you will learn from what you hear.


Another thing that you can do is go to the local library and read the magazines and other publications to which your clients subscribe. Learn about your clients by reading what they read. If you don’t know which publications you should be studying, then ask your customers what they read. Look up articles in back issues that are posted on the Internet. Use all of the information that you can gather to sell your prospects what they already want to buy.

Why is it that your clients buy your products/services?

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