What is the Future of Prospecting?

What does the future of prospecting look like? As social media sites continue to update privacy features and more and more fake accounts and bots are created, how will you get the dream lead to connect with you? Sites like LinkedIn were a gold mine of potential leads. You could find the perfect customer, connect with them relatively easily, and close deals pretty quickly. However, with restrictions and limitations put in place from LinkedIn, and the fact that it is now extremely saturated, those dream clients are harder and harder to reach. It’s time to start looking towards the future. We’ll let you in on some of our secrets and how we prospect outside of the norm.

The first thing Boundless Media is doing is cutting down on cold outreach. We’re not stopping completely, but we aren’t doing as much. “Without cold outreach, what happens when you don’t have any more leads?” That’s a great question, and I’m glad you asked! Part of our outreach strategy is finding avenues of connecting with people that are already asking for our services. We are moving away from telling people about the problem they have and how we solve it. Many people are out there asking for help already; you just have to know where to look. We ditch the cold leads with our Request For Contract (RFC) plan and find people asking for our help. The best part is, they also already tell us their budget and timeline. All we do is tell them how we can solve their problem better than anyone else.

Now, ditching LinkedIn or other social media sites isn’t an end-solution. They are ever-changing, and if you look in the right place, you could find someone asking for services. You still want to hold on to the leads and relationships you’ve made through message campaigns and groups. After all, you never know when a lead will turn into a contract. Not to mention, you still need a platform to post your content. When you use the RFC model, there is also a way that you can refer someone if you see a request that isn’t in your niche. This starts a cycle that can greatly benefit you.

Let’s look at it in this situation:

• You see a contract request that would be perfect for someone in your sales pipeline
• You send it to them and ask for nothing in return, building trust between you and them
• They sign the contract and make a sale and might return the favor to you one day!
  

So, you’re tackling two tasks at the same time. Although RFCs bring you warm leads that are ready to buy, they still need to trust you. As you’re looking for contracts that would be a good fit for yourself, make sure you look at the other jobs companies have posted as well. Building trust will always be an integral part of business, so don’t put your blinders on when landing your contracts. The more work you do, the more referrals you send, the more relationships you build, the higher the chances are prospects will start coming to you.

Let’s take a quick look at the RFC model in action:

1. Review contracts
2. Draft proposals and apply
3. Set up meetings
4. Meet with your lead-- This is just like a normal discovery call, but you already know the project, budget, and timeline so you can have a better outline of what to talk about.
5. Sign the contract
6. Refer others to jobs
7. Repeat steps 1-5
8. Start seeing leads knocking on your door
9. Increase your revenue
   

You can do other things to help make your RFCs successful, like keeping up with your email campaigns, mailers, other marketing plans, and connecting with your network on social media sites. These things aren’t going away, and you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket, but the future of prospecting is changing, and we all need to change with it. Boundless Media offers a variety of plans in the way of lead generation, content creation, and of course, our RFC model. If you’re a service-based business looking for leads, this RFC model is a great way to increase your closed deals and increase your revenue. Are you ready to start asking for RFCs?