There are practically three ways you can win new customers in your corporate market.
- You are nominated
- You address
- You advertise
All are good, all generate opportunities.
The problem lies in the cost of this generation and the volume generated.
Indications do not generate volume of opportunities and are also not controllable. It is by far the most convenient channel.
Who doesn't love getting a call from a referral who wants to talk to us for possible employment.
It's a delight. Too bad you can't scale it up.
You can't put in your plan, "Increase referrals by 40%." Unless you approach your captive market and ask for those referrals.
Approach. It's pure prospecting. It's dealing with cold audiences, hammering on the phone with email support and scheduling good meetings.
This is highly scalable. You need to implement processes and especially train the SDRs. Cost.
And finally, ads. You buy media and make your audience search for you. It generates a lot of volume, but low qualification and the screening (conversion processes) costs a lot of money.
All three of these lead generation (opportunity) channels have a common denominator:
The real need to buy.
A channel is only as efficient as the real need for the solution offered.
We all think our products are the best. We have a ready-made speech and by saying the same phrases to the market so much we end up believing that our product is the best.
Surely he is very good, of that I have no doubt.
Now, better is very different from good.
You see, all 3 lead generation channels will bring you new customers, within an allowable cost, if and only if:
- There is a clear perception of value provided (good product)
- There is a conviction that this is the best market value (best product)
So we have two challenges in winning our place in the sun:
- Affordable lead generation costs
- Competitiveness (better than others, including price)
And now we finally hit the common denominator of both:
Your internal costs.
In the maxim, the company with the best chance of competing is the one that can afford to pay more to acquire customers because of its spartan internal cost structure.
So it is very difficult to "play" at having a company.
I see countless young entrepreneurs, start ups flourishing with great ideas and a lot of drive from the staff.
But I also see a huge gap between what is found in the success cases, icons of the new generations and the Brazilian reality.
There is nothing to talk about or advise. People learn from their falls.
When you hear someone talking about fads and "best practices" ask yourself: Has this person ever sold anything in life to be able to afford the costs of a company? Does this person have a payroll to deposit every 5th and 20th? Has this person ever actively paid a tax, paying a government bill?
When I talk about participating in the market, I talk about a struggle, of blood, of investment, of betting, of measuring, of insisting. You spend more time frustrating than celebrating.
You invest and stand watching the pot boil over, while feeling the desperation of seeing a few bubbles forming. That's how it is, my friend. Take it or leave it.
If you are starting out, someone needs to tell you this:
Getting clients is no piece of cake and you will spend much of your time chasing without achieving. You will find yourself overwhelmed and stressed.
If you can live with that in the medium to long term, you will make good money, well above average.
And if you think you can take that box to finally enjoy a nabulous life you've been taught to call happiness, you'll break.
Cash must be reinvested in new products, new processes and in gaining scale.
So, let's work hard, conquer market and keep betting on our companies and jobs.
In the end, it works out.
Now, this is Brazil, amigo. There is no room for fluff here. Either you go hard and take it very seriously or you succumb, i.e., without any clients in your portfolio.
If you are an old monkey like me, then you already know what I am talking about.
