Prospection
Find clients without losing your week to it.
Where to look, how to approach, when to follow up. The whole path, in the order it actually happens.
In short
Finding clients comes down to four moves: define precisely who you want to reach, build a list of real companies, make contact through the channel your target actually uses, then follow up until you get an answer. It is the last one, the least glamorous, that accounts for almost all the difference between two otherwise comparable businesses.
The problem is almost never finding them
When a business says it needs more clients, it usually thinks it needs more prospects. Most of the time that is wrong. The contacts are already there: the inbound enquiries from the last six months, the quotes that never got an answer, the business cards from a trade show, the people met on site. What is missing is a record of those contacts, and the act of going back to them.
Prospecting rarely fails on the first call. It fails on the third, the one nobody makes because nobody remembers it was due. A lead with no follow-up date is not a lead, it is a memory.
The four steps, in order
None of them rescues the one before. A perfect list will not save a vague pitch, and a brilliant pitch will not compensate for never following up.
1. Know who you are after
A sector, a size, an area. « SMEs » is not a target: « communications agencies with 5 to 20 staff in the North West » is one, and it can be counted.
2. Build the list
Public company registers, past enquiries, your network, trade shows, professional directories. Each source has its own cost and freshness.
3. Make contact
Phone, email, LinkedIn, referral. The right channel is the one your contact uses during their working day, not the one you are most comfortable with.
4. Follow up
An answer rarely arrives on the first message. This is the step almost nobody sees through, which is exactly why it is where your advantage sits.
How many contacts for one client
The ratio depends on your trade, your average deal size and how sharp your targeting is. Rather than trusting an average found online, measure your own: over three months, count first contacts, meetings booked, quotes sent and quotes won.
Those four numbers tell you immediately where it breaks. Many contacts and few meetings means your targeting or your opening line needs work. Many quotes and few signatures means the problem is follow-up, not prospecting.
What it actually costs in time
One hour a day, held to, beats three full days once a quarter. Prospecting in bursts creates troughs: you fill the pipeline, you deliver, you stop prospecting, and three months later you are back at zero.
This is not a question of motivation but of organisation. A fixed slot, a list prepared the day before, and one place where today's follow-ups are written down.
Where to start
Five ways in, depending on where you are stuck today.
- Prospecting planDecide who you are after, how many contacts you need, and at what pace.
- Where to find prospectsThe free sources, the paid ones, and what each really contains.
- Cold callingWhat happens in the first twenty seconds, and how to hold a run.
- Cold emailSubject line, length, follow-up sequence and the legal frame.
- Following upWhen to follow up, how often, and what to say to silence.
Frequently asked questions
Should you prospect when you already have clients?
Yes, and that is the best time. Prospecting only when the pipeline empties creates a cycle of troughs: rebuilding a flow usually takes three to six months. Regular prospecting, even at a low rate, smooths that curve.
How long before the first results?
Count your usual sales cycle, plus the time needed to build a list. On a short cycle, first results come in one to two months. On a long cycle, six months is normal.
Buy a list or build one?
Public company registers give you identity, activity, address and size for free. What a paid list adds is named contact details. Start with what is free, measure your conversion rate, and only buy if the maths justifies it.
Do you need software to prospect?
Not to start. A spreadsheet is fine while you are tracking a few dozen leads on your own. It becomes a handicap as soon as several people work the same list, or when the follow-ups to schedule exceed what a human memory holds.
Keep track of every follow-up
Lea CRM keeps your contacts, deals and reminders in one place, and shows you every morning what needs doing today.