How to find a client or company to work with?
Often, local businesses strive for help and would appreciate your marketing expertise and help for free. However, contacting businesses might be a time-consuming job to do. So, make a list of the type of businesses you would like to work with, select (at least) your top three, and contact them by sending these corporations an email or giving them a phone call. Your main goal is to:
A) Set up a “discovery meeting” (face-to-face interview, phone call conversation, or zoom meeting) with the business manager, marketing manager, or the person who might give you permission to work with the company as well as information to complete your project.
B) Explain what the project is about and the value that the company might receive from your work.
C) Gain their trust by increasing your credibility as students of the College of Business at Florida International University.
D) Let them know that during the process you will need to collect information about the company (Brand, history, average sales, competition, industry data, business goals, etc) and Social Media Marketing data such as their Facebook Analytics.
Discovery Meeting
“A discovery meeting is a form of investigative meeting used by consultants, designers, and project teams to learn more about a project’s requirements. During a discovery meeting, one or more people interview the project stakeholders about project goals, background, available resources, constraints and any other factors that may impact the project’s success.”
The following steps are based on an Inc. article Links to an external site..
Build a Relationship with your client
Before you even step foot into a sales meeting, you need to remember something: Your prospect only cares about one person–and it’s not you. First, build a relationship with your client, focus your entire conversation on the prospect, and they’ll be much more interested in engaging with you. For over 70 years, sales gurus have been teaching salespeople to be really excited and passionate about their offerings. As a result, salespeople have developed an enthusiastic tone that prospects can pick out from a mile away. It’s time to leave this old-school approach where it belongs–in the past. Lower your tone, slow down, and adopt a more casual and genuine approach to connecting with your prospect.
Collect Information
Whether you realize it yet or not, you’re an expert in your industry with a unique bird’s-eye-view of trends among your customers. This perspective is extremely valuable to your prospects, so make it a priority to come off as the expert with your prospects in sales meetings. Start by sharing things you’ve seen work–or not work–for your customers. This will make you an expert in your prospects’ eyes, and they’ll want to keep the conversation going to learn more from you.
Mission and vision
Industry Information
Clear understanding of the company’s goals, products and services.
Unstructured information about its customers. (Audience Analysis)
Access to the brand analytics (Social Media Metrics)
Competitors (Threats)
Challenges
Once you’ve discussed challenges you’ve observed in the industry, transition to asking prospects about the challenges in their own organizations. Therefore, prepare before the meeting. List two or three problems you’ve seen in the industry–problems your product or service can ultimately solve.
Goals (What would they like to achieve?) (General Objective and Specific Objectives)
Problems and Opportunities
Constraints
A lot of old-school sales trainers claim, “Prospects will never give you a budget, so don’t bother asking.” They’re wrong. Once you’ve established the cost of key challenges, it makes sense to ask, “Now, what are you willing to invest in solving the problem?” This simple approach works and sets you up to ultimately close more sales.
Resources
Budget
Time
Human Resources
Schedule next steps
In every meeting you have, schedule the next meeting or conversation before it’s over.
For your reference, I’ve attached the work of three different groups from previous Cohorts. Use these as a reference. Some of them were advised to improve the objectives, strategies, tactics, competitor analysis, format, and more.
FIND RESOURCES: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ejuxrasb5nn7c/New+folder+(15)