Before you can become a leading designer with great clients and a wall full of awards, you’re going to need to scope out some prospects. A prospect, simply put, is a potential, or “prospective,” client. They’re in your sales loop, but haven’t yet graduated to being a paying client with loads of work for you.

While I’m writing definitions, this is a good place to define marketing and sales. If you look in the newspaper want ads, odds are you’ll see several jobs for marketing reps. In most cases, they’re not looking for a marketing rep. They’re looking for a salesperson. Marketing and sales aren’t synonyms. Marketing are those activities do to warm up the sales playing field. It’s sending out a mailer or press release, writing some articles or white papers, attending networking events, along with other tools and tactics to get your name out there and become visible. Sales, on the other hand, is about face time, making calls, giving presentations and ultimately closing the deal.

Contrary to popular belief, most design firm principals make cold and warm calls. Successful firms don’t just sit there waiting for the phone to ring. As a matter of fact, design firm consultants, Design Management Resources, did a research study a while back. They found that as much as 30% of a designer’s or firm’s business comes from cold calls and sending cold letters with a phone follow up. That’s pretty significant. If you’re not sending letters and making calls to prospects, you might just want to rethink your efforts.

Okay, I wrote all that to write this. Where the heck do you find prospects? Search engines and the Web are good places to start. Poke around and look for some growth industries or businesses that are similar to work you’ve already done. Swing over to the library and hit the reference desk. Ask them to point you to the Index Guide of Advertisers and/or the Index Guide of Advertising Agencies, if you do trade work. These tomes are also called the “Red Books” and they provide a wealth of information. Others are The Million Dollar Directory and O’Dwyers Directory of P.R. Firms. There are several other directories the Reference Librarian can suggest. Over the course of an afternoon you can build a pretty decent list.

The Web also offers some useful sites. One is LinkedIn.com. You put together a profile and then build your network. The idea is something like six degrees of separation. Folks you know know others who know yet more. In a couple of steps you can gain introductions to prospects. Another one that I’ve just started to use is Jigsaw.com. It’s an online directory of business cards and pretty slick. The other day I was trying to find contact info for a prospect. They have several locations, but I couldn’t anything about their corporate office and key contacts. I popped the business’ name into Jigsaw and bingo! It returned several key contacts at the corporate office, complete with addresses, phone numbers and even phone extensions. How handy is that?

Finding and contacting prospects should be part of your regular weekly activities. Ideally, you’ll want to build a list of about 300 or more people. Keep in contact to insure you’re on their radar screen. When the time is right, you’ll be the one at the top of their mind.

Until the next
Marketing Minute
all the best,
nt