Episode 189 – Stage 1: Grow Your Business with Prospecting and Pipelines
Do you know that every action you take creates a reaction that can be a big help to your business growth? If you are just starting with your business and you have tons of time at your disposal; how are you going to take full advantage of that? In this episode, Adam Stott goes old school where he talks about how useful prospecting clients and creating pipelines can be if you are in the Stage 1 of your business. Listen to learn more!
Show Highlights:
- Why being a perfectionist can slow you down from growing your business
- How your habits can influence the results that you are going to achieve
- Understanding how sales pipelines work in business
- Evaluate the activities you are putting out in the market if you are at the beginning stage of your business
- Adam Stott tells us about the lost art of Prospecting
Links Mentioned:
Big Business Events Members Network
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott:
Hi everybody, Adam Stott here. Thanks for checking out my podcast business growth secrets, you’re absolutely in the right place. This podcast is going to reveal to you all of the secrets that you’ve been looking to discover. They’re going to allow you to cure your cash flow problems and attain more clients. Bring in more leads for your business and create systems and processes that give you the growth that you want. You are going to discover the business growth secrets you have been looking for that I’ve used to sell over 15 million pounds worth of products and services on social media. And help clients everywhere to grow their businesses on the mark. Let’s get started on the business growth secrets podcast.
Hello everybody, welcome. Tonight we’re gonna be talking to you about business growth tonight. Welcome on everybody! Hope you’re all been doing well when you’re getting used to this current lockdown situation we find ourselves in. What I wanted to do is talk about tonight a bit of business growth. I’m going to go through some old school methods. The reason we go through some old school methods is a lots you’re hearing out there in the moment. About growing your business and about getting out there and making things happen. Seems that everybody wants you to jump through 400 hoops to get a loan or to go and get a client in order to get sales.
I think that that’s where a lot of people that haven’t run businesses before from go wrong. They’re trying to set everything up they’re trying to make everything perfect. So I don’t know if anyone’s listening tonight, where you’ve suffered a little bit of from perfectionism? You want absolutely everything to be perfect before you go out there and make your business grow and make things happen. I think that often that’s a mistake; the quickest and fastest way that we can actually grow a business is by taking action. I think this is a really good topic to talk about which is business growth. This time, when a lot of you are getting settled in after first few days of being in lockdown with your businesses you’re starting to get settled in.
When you start to get settled in this is where we, the habits we create tend to help create the results that we’re going to get. So we start right and we start in the right way now, we can really build up momentum so having a really successful next couple of months, while we’re working from home or wherever you’re working from which really get the ball rolling in the right light. But if we don’t start right and we let the bad habits creep in early on, it’s a lot harder to turn it around.
So I thought I’d do tonight is focus on what are the good kind of habits that you can put in place. What are the things that you can do, and I’ll kick you off with a few we’ve got a few that I’m going to talk about specifically a few different things I think people should really focus on, and then we’ll of course get into what everybody’s saying in the comments as well.
Now the first thing I would say before we even get into anything is the growing a business during this kind of time when you’re limited. Some of you might be quite limited in what you can do. The first thing that we got to look at is we’ve got to look and understand pipelines. The first thing I wanted to talk about was pipelines, because I think this is where a lot of people really go wrong. Some of you running businesses have been stopped from doing what you’ve been able to do in some way or you’re not able to go and get as big as sales. You’ve been able to get in different circumstances, or you’re not able to do things face to face. Maybe your products have been delayed or whatever it might be.
Now, where we want to work really hard if that’s the case. You got understand what a sales pipeline is and this is how it works out. The more conversations that you have, the more action that you take the more people you reach out to now. More people you present your product or service to now. The more people you speak to now, the more that you’re going to see those sales and those leads and those opportunities filtering later on.
I often say this because some of the people that I coach and I’ve had a couple of coaching sessions. Sunday I was really honest coaching session, first thing they said to me, we haven’t really run a business before. We’ve been in these different industries and this is kind of where we’re getting a little bit confused. We’re listening to a lot of the information out there. We’re listening to a lot with different staff and we want to work out, how do we just literally grow the business? How do we literally just get sales in the business? How do we literally just get clients in the business without having to jump through 500 homes? This is a thing a lot of the stuff that you’re going to see online.
Oh, you got to write an E book and then you got to write this and you got to have a lead magnet and you got to have a webinar and you got to have an event, and you got to have this and you got to have that and it’s like 400 things you got to do before you can actually go and transact business well that absolutely isn’t true and you shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to jump through all these hoops, in order to go and get the things that you want to get what we’ve got to look at is what stage of a business you are at.
Now, if you’re at the stage one of the business. And you’re in the beginning stages of business, so let’s say stage one. And we’ll call this the beginner stage. So you just started a business, maybe you started within the last year or so, going out, you know any point you could be right in the beginning or you could be a year in, you’re getting some sales out there and growing and you’re doing things when you get going. Well this stage of the business, everything, and every result you get all the sales you get, all the growth you get, all the people that you get inquiries from right at the beginning of beginner stage. Stage one of growing a business, it’s all on you.
Everything is a is pretty much all on you unless you’re somebody who’s had loads of funding to start off with, and you’re able to go and put 200 grand in the bank. Go and build a sales team, a marketing team and then you’ll fill in a house straightaway, and you start off as a CEO from the beginning. Then, unless you’re in that privilege position which not many people are, then you have to do the buildup where you have to do the grind work you have to do the starting point.
The businesses that I’ve run and the businesses that I’ve grown I feel that the making of me. The reason that I’m able to help so many people and the reason I’ve seen my business growth, is because I’ve had to do that grind work. I’ve had to start a business, right from the beginning where I’ve had absolutely nothing, where I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I’m not sure I’m going to grow it, and I’ve had to use pure enthusiasm and pure relationship building to build that business up from the beginning in the first place. If you don’t have to do that bit by or you’ve never done that bit before. A lot of people are really scared of that bit at that stage one the beginner stage of a business, then really you miss a really valuable skill set for the future.
So it’s certainly not something that you should be afraid of it’s something that, you know, you’re an entrepreneur you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s something that you should relish in that beginning stage, and at the beginner stage it’s all on you. So how this is going to work when you’re the beginning of a business, it’s going to come down so how much activity that you’re putting out into the market. Okay, now what happens when I say activity is activity when you do an activity and we’ll go through what they are in a minute? We’ll go through a few ideas, when you go in and act an activity, you get a reaction to that activity, and that in turn courageously relays an opportunity to sale or client.
Now the biggest problem and the reason most people don’t get clients and don’t get sales and don’t get leads in the beginning, is they’re completely devoid of activity. They don’t go and put the activity out there, so they don’t get reactions back. And so, I’m sure you would agree that makes perfect sense but I don’t think many people tell you that.
So you’re at the beginner stage in the business growth. It’s going to come down to you, and how much activity you 08:03 the marketplace. So what kind of, what do I mean by activities? Well activities are things like, how many phone calls you are making per day. How many new people you’re contacting per day? How many videos you’re doing on social media for their sake? Posting on social media? How many times you’re getting yourself out there? It’s those activities that are going to drive reactions.
So if you put those activities out there you’re going to get a reaction back from the activity that you do. And that is going to start the process of you having a conversation with somebody about buying your products or services, and in the beginner, the beginner stage of a business, you pretty much need to focus all of your attention if you want to grow a business on what activities that you’re doing, you know there’s certain activities you can do.
One of them this is a lost art. The Lost Art of building a business, which if you’re at the beginner stage is something that we really need to talk about. And this is something that I’ve learned in the industry that I was trained in is of course the Lost Art of prospecting, which is stage one of a business is pretty much everything right, but no one ever talks about it you know you can hear people talk about lead magnets, you’re going to hear people talk about social media ads, you’re going to hear people talk about, you know, eBooks and, you know, all these different things, trip wires all this kind of stuff webinars 09:19. Right.
That’s all fine, but that’s when we’re going to get more into the stage two of the business was stage three of a business where we’re growing the business in a bit more. Now the last part of prospecting is going out there and starting conversations in any way that you physically possibly can. I think that this is massively lost. I said to the one of the coaching sessions having earlier on, and they said to me, they didn’t actually say it this way because they’re super positive absolute a player superstar people that.
They said that, I’ll give you an example of what they did say they said right, you know, we’re still early we’re not getting many people like, you know, getting engaging with us we’re not generating many leads because the minute we’re using Instagram as our main platform. And we’ve only got 400 people on our Instagram platform.
The response that I gave him was very simple, right, I said, Okay, well that’s 400 people. That’s actually a lot of people. I said that’s put this in perspective. You know, what kind of revenue do you want your business to do a year? Okay, so if you look at we’ve got 400 people on Instagram, this could be anything. It could be 400 people on Facebook, could be 400 people in your Facebook group, it’s gonna be 400 people in your email database who finds people anywhere. Right. So just to get you in the mindset of thinking about you for a moment, whilst I’m telling the story is that, you know, we’ve got 400 people and we want the business to do 100,000 pounds in revenue in the first year or one of the business to 50,000 pounds in revenue, whatever it might be.
All you got to then look at is what do you want to sell how much stuff do you want to sell what kind of revenue do you want to generate bring that down to how many products do you need to sell, and then bring that down to how many people you need to actually go and buy it, then you bring prospecting in and you plug it into that into that matrix and you say right.
Okay, so, you know, if I take those 400 people, and I contact 25 of them per day, and I send them all a message saying you know hey thanks for following me on Instagram, just let me know there’s anything I can help you with at all be really good to get to know a bit more about you and your business and you sent out 25 messages per day so those 400 people that are following you.
You’re going to find pretty quickly is that maybe 23 of them ignore you, but two of them might turn around and say oh for those really nicely sending that message. This is why I’m following you. This is the sort of thing that I’m interested in. All the sudden you’re like, oh wow, right well picks up two leads today just from doing one activity 25 times, you do the same thing tomorrow, you don’t get another two leads you do the same thing.
The next day you get another to do the same thing. The next day you get another two leads. Now that you’ve got you know, for five days, you’ve got 10 opportunities. Now you’ve got 10 opportunities. What do you do with these 10 opportunities? Well you can keep talking to them on Instagram; you can keep talking to them on your Facebook group. You can keep talking to them wherever you’re talking to them. But what would be much better is how let’s jump on the phone, and actually use the old school or talking on the phone and elevate someone and take them from someone that you’re talking to on social media to taking them to a physical phone call.
Now you’re taking them to a physical phone call, you’re getting to know them better. You’re getting to know whether they’re a great fit for your product, whether they’re a great fit for you. and whether you’re a great fit for them. Now if you look.
That’s just the easiest I mean how easy is that because that’s so easy is if you want to go and start a business that’s that you can go and get 10 leads in your first week, and you can go and take 10 of those leads turn it into five phone calls. And out of those five phone calls you turn that into one client that buys your product or service. Now I know some people who start a business, and it takes them three months, six months, a year to get their first month, we only get your first client, you can go and get your first client in a week.
Just following that methodology you know most easy simple fashion you’ve ever seen, you know, but this is what’s lost on the world I think now, where a lot of people coming out of all different types of industries coming out of all different types of jobs. They’ve never ever learned these kind of structures and, and the background I had I worked at Ford Motor Company for many years, and I used this is what we used to do. But in order to grow, you know, arguably, Ford Motor Company is a huge company. This is what they had all of their employees doing pretty much every single one of them prospecting for new business on a daily basis because they know and they know that growing a business was a numbers game.
Their employees didn’t get emotional when the 23 people out of 25 that contacted him, didn’t get back to him. When God sent 25 messages and no one responded they went, No, they send another 25, minus and another 25. The next day, send another 25. Next, another 25. The next day, and then it goes back to what I was saying before we go on to the subject is he goes straight back to the pipeline.
What happens is you start lining up these people that you’ve spoken to, and you build a pipeline of people that are then going to come back to you. And what happens is when you least expect it. You get a phone call out the blue. Oh yeah, we had a discussion like two months ago about your thing, you know about your project about your service whatever it was, and I wasn’t quite ready at that moment but you know could we talk forever about it now can you still look after me in the same way. And then they ended up becoming a client as well and because you’ve been consistent. And because you’ve been organized, guess what, all of a sudden you start picking up leads and opportunities and sales and your business keeps growing and keeps growing and keeps growing and keeps growing and keeps growing.
This is the reality of how easy is to go and grow a business. The reality is, people don’t do it. Now you know what the funny thing is this right as you get bigger, and as your business gets bigger and your business growth and it gets massive, you don’t have the time to do these old school relationship building this old school techniques to go and build relationships, if you don’t have that time, you only have this advantage in the beginning.
What I see from a lot of people that are seeing ground business growth right in the beginning, is they forget that this is actually their unique advantage because what do you have a hell of a lot of stuff off in the very beginning when you start a business, when you start right at the beginning, what do you have a lot of people tell me in the comments.
Because it’s pretty obvious you have a hell of a lot of time, right. So this is one of the things that we can employ if we’re at stage one of the beginning of the business. Right. And then it’s super easy to go and do it. And really, of course you can go out there and you can drive you can use ads. If you want to go and use some different ads are speaking the other night about TikTok ads a new initiative they’ve just launched. I think from what I’m told I had quite a few messages saying thanks I didn’t know you could get that 500 pound ad credit, you literally go and get a 500 pound ad credit go and build your business within a platform completely free.
So there are things out there and you can go and test these things, but this is what I’d encourage you to do if you’re at stage one. If you’re a stage one, go out there, start taking action, start understanding that every action you take creates a reaction that comes back to you and means that you will go out there and you’ll start to get your first clients, you’ll start to get your first sales.
Now there are a few people out there who might have been gone for quite some time and this might be the way you build your business. But what tends to seep in sometimes, and I’ve seen this loads of times right. So you’ve got somebody that and I’ve had this loads of songs a few more clients on tonight so you’re going to probably some this might sort of ring a bell for a few of you, you have this situation where you’ve gone out, you’ve used a method to grow a business you’ve used a method to go and get yourself 10, 15, 20 clients, whatever it might be, you start getting inquiries you start getting sales.
Then all of a sudden he goes really quiet, and it goes really quiet, like oh my God he’s gone really quiet and you forget the reason you got busy in the first place because you probably were doing something like this reaching out to people, then you went and looked after all these people, and you got too busy to carry on doing it, which means your pipeline ran out. So I think understanding pipelines, is a really important thing for an early stage business owner, to understand because early stage business owner understands how to build a pipeline, you know that then one of your jobs is to keep that pipeline full.