The Marketing Puzzle: Finding Your Ideal Prospects

"It's not about who you know—it's about who knows you." This profound shift in perspective forms the cornerstone of effective marketing strategy for today's business owners. Whether you're struggling to find qualified prospects or feeling overwhelmed by the countless marketing options available, this episode delivers practical wisdom to cut through the noise.

Marketing often feels like an insurmountable challenge, but it doesn't have to be. By understanding what makes someone a qualified prospect—they can afford your offering, you can have professional conversations with them, they have a genuine need, and they treat you with respect—you can focus your efforts where they'll yield the greatest results.

Finding these ideal clients requires a systematic approach. Rather than casting a wide net or waiting for prospects to find you, successful marketing means identifying where your potential clients congregate and establishing a consistent presence there. Whether through carefully selected social media platforms, community involvement, email marketing, or events, the key is regular visibility in places that matter. As Morris explains, "You don't just throw a line into the lake, you go to the best fishing hole you can to find that bigmouth bass."

The most effective marketing systems don't require endless hours or complex strategies. By choosing platforms strategically, creating consistent touchpoints, and focusing on building relationships rather than just broadcasting messages, you can develop a marketing approach that delivers qualified prospects without consuming all your time and energy. After all, marketing is just one important piece of running your successful business.

Ready to transform your approach to finding clients? Visit morrissimscom for more resources on building efficient, effective marketing systems that connect you with your ideal prospects.

Chapters

• 0:00 Marketing: The Business Challenge
• 2:03 Finding More Qualified Prospects
• 4:00 Who Knows You: Visibility Matters
• 6:15 Defining Your Qualified Prospect
• 9:05 Choosing Marketing Platforms
• 12:09 Creating Consistency in Your Marketing
• 15:30 Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Marketing. That's a really big word in business today. So what are you doing about it in your business? Do you have a system and is it working for you to bring in qualified prospective buyers that you're able to enter into the sales process with? Do you know if it is actually working Well? Today, let's talk about marketing in your business.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Welcome to the Commission Code Podcast. We're here to help you overcome the challenges that most of us face in our business. From time to time, you know things like feeling like you're on a plateau and you just can't seem to grow your business. Or maybe feeling overwhelmed, just trying to make ends meet, and yet it seems like you're always working. Or maybe you've done quite well for a while, but now nothing seems to be working anymore. Well, we want to help you solve those problems and many more. Our objective is to provide you with practical solutions so you can grow your business and have more time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Speaker 1: 1:12

My name is Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for this show. I've spent years okay, decades really in the corporate world teaching business owners how to increase their revenue and use professional sales processes and run their business more effectively and efficiently. I started my own consulting and training business about seven years ago, I guess, and I'm helping my clients do just exactly that Get more revenue, increase their revenue and have more time to enjoy the fruits of their labor. But I got to tell you I'm having more fun than ever helping people build successful businesses. So, with all that said, let's get on with today's episode of the Commission Code for your Success. The question I'm asked more than any other when I talk to business owners is this how do I find more prospects, morris? Or, to put it another way, how do I find more people to enter into the sales process, who are my ideal potential buyers, people who are my ideal client? Well, that's a great question. No matter how good you may be inside your technical and product knowledge kind of stuff, and how good you are at people skills, those things are of no use unless you got somebody to talk to and somebody that you can enter into the sales process with. So how do you do that? Well, that, my friends, is a loaded question. Today we call it marketing. There are a zillion people out there who run marketing agencies and a zillion consultants who will tell you exactly how they think that you should proceed with marketing your business. Literally, I have more marketing experts who would like to be on my podcast, the commission code, many more of those than I have of any other type of guest that might be, you know, trying to get on the show. But you know, one expert that I had on the show recently shared a comment with me that well, it kind of caught me by surprise and I've repeated it because of that over and over and over again, because it makes perfect sense and it really has helped me think about marketing you. Ready, here it is.

Speaker 1: 3:34

For years, we were taught that in business it's all about who you know. Well, that's not quite right. In reality, it's all about who knows you. Wow, man, that's a change in thinking, isn't it? Visibility makes a huge difference. Who knows me, who knows you? That's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Yes, your network is vitally important, don't get me wrong. There's that whole section about who you know and your network is vitally important. Don't get me wrong. There's that whole section about who you know and your network is critical and we should all be aware and work out there to try and meet people that we can identify as potential ideal clients. It just can't stop there. You've got to become visible in your community, in our communities where our ideal prospective clients are active. Now I'm not talking about your geographic community, I'm talking about your virtual community. You've got to be virtual in that community, out there on the web and wherever. That is the same place where your ideal clients live and work.

Speaker 1: 4:41

So how do you go about doing both of those things? There are a multitude of different ways to go about finding people who are going to be your prospective buyers. It becomes staggering just absolutely staggering to go through it all and quite a struggle to create a plan that you can then follow and put into place. Maybe that's why there's so many people out there making a living helping business owners put it all together. I don't know, but I know there's a lot to do.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Here's what I suggest to my clients and what's included in our professional salesperson training. You've got to start by identifying who it is you prefer to do business with. What exactly are their characteristics? Okay, there's a guy in the back that just yelled out hey, morris, I want to do business with anybody who's going to buy my product or service. I don't care if they fit a mold, they just have to have the money to buy. I get it and for sure we'll allow anybody to buy our product, if they fit our ideal client profile or not.

Speaker 1: 5:51

When I was training young insurance agents, I'd tell them hey, if somebody calls you and says I want to buy a million-dollar term policy, you don't start by asking them a bunch of questions. You start by filling out an application. Make the sale, get it done. Here I go. Make the sale right. They want to buy it. Let them buy. The process has already taken place without you. They want to buy, so your job is just to help them get what they want.

Speaker 1: 6:20

However, you know that doesn't happen as often as you might like. Hoping, someone calls or walks in the door. It's probably not a great business strategy, right? In that case, I have no control. I'm sitting around waiting for somebody else to call. That didn't make sense to build a system where you can go out and find people that you would prefer to do business with, a system that you control and is directed at qualified prospective clients. So I guess we ought to define that right.

Speaker 1: 6:56

What is a qualified prospective client? What's a qualified prospect In general? There are four things that make somebody a qualified prospect, somebody that could be a client for you. Number one they can afford to pay for what you're offering. Number two you can have a professional and positive conversation with them. We used to call this that. It had to be somebody that you could approach on a favorable basis. Number three they have a need for what I'm offering. Number three they have a need for what I'm offering. Somebody wants to buy a boat. I'm not going to go try and sell it to somebody in I don't know where that is, 150, 250 miles away from water. They have to have a need for what I'm offering. And number four they're not disrespectful. They understand who you are as a professional and they're willing to do business with you. To put it another way, they're not a pain in the neck. You don't have to do business with people who don't treat you as a professional and respect what you do. You can choose. That's part of the beauty of being in business for yourself.

Speaker 1: 8:05

So our system begins with identifying who you're looking for. I don't go fishing for redfish or red snapper in a freshwater lake near our house. I go out into the Gulf of America where they live out there in the saltwater. They don't live in freshwater. They live in saltwater. Well, the same thing is true here.

Speaker 1: 8:28

You want to fish for prospects where they live, and to do that, you got to know some stuff about them and you got to know what you're fishing for, and that's creating, or identifying, that ideal client. What are the characteristics of that ideal client? Let's get specific here. Where do they congregate? Where do they get together? Where do they, if you will live? How do they communicate among themselves? What are they interested in? What do they do for fun? Can I find business people at the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club? Oh, yeah, sure I can also find them on the golf course or the country club. So you see, you need to know what you're fishing for and where to go find the fish. One of my marketing friends says you don't just throw a line into the lake, you go to the best fishing hole you can to find that bigmouth bass. Well, now you can begin to build the system and go out there and meet the right qualified prospects for your business. That's what we're going to do. That's where you're going to go.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Now there are many platforms that you can use to become visible to your ideal client and where you can begin to interact with them and generate conversation. So the next step is you have to choose the platform that you want to use to interact with your ideal client. Now, here are five different kind of platforms. You might choose Social media. There are a zillion of them, right? Choose one or two, but not ten. We can't spend all our time doing this One or two.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Secondly, you could do personal observation, where you're getting out in the community and meeting people. I think that's probably one of the best ways to go out and begin to build that positive business relationship. You could use direct mail Not a high percentage return on investment, but it must be working, because I know we get a huge stack of that stuff in the mail just about every day but it's certainly a way to be visible, right? The next one is email marketing. It is said over and over again that your email list is one of the best assets your business has today. List is one of the best assets your business has today, and there are a bunch of different platforms and things you can use to do email marketing so that you don't spam people, so that you do it right and you put it all together, and some of them are even free until you get up to a huge number of prospects or a huge number of people on your email list.

Speaker 1: 11:07

You could also participate in events, again getting out and actually meeting people face-to-face. I think that's a great way to meet people, to gather contact information, because that's all we're trying to do at that event is just gather some contact information, give them some knowledge, give them some help. Give before you get right. We're going to give to them the best things that we have and then we're going to get their contact information and follow up with them later after the event. Now, I'm sure there are more Some great marketing expert could tell me.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Morris, you only scratched the surface, but this is my personal top five. Once I got that, now I can create a plan, a plan to regularly, keyword regularly and consistently show up on the platform that I've chosen. Here's a quick word of caution, folks. It is rare that I find somebody who can generate enough contacts to build a business focused only on social media. Your plan needs to allow you to show up on the platform on a regular, specific basis. You can't, you just can't spend all your time just on social media. I don't think again.

Speaker 1: 12:26

That's my opinion, my podcast is published on Wednesdays. Why? Because I chose Wednesday. The key is that it's consistent. It comes every Wednesday at 5 am. Poof, it's going to show up in your inbox, this self-podcast, these short little 10-minute podcasts those show up on Fridays. Now, I'll admit I didn't do any great research that said, gee, you ought to publish on Wednesday and Friday. I probably should have, because I bet it's out there. There's research on everything. Right, I chose those days that work for me to be able to get the work done and be consistent, because I believe that being consistent, being regular, that's what's going to allow people to find you. Now, once we've done all those things, your plan that you're building here can be the list of things that you or your team are going to do on that regular basis, so that people are going to know where you are and where you're going to show up, so that they can come join you. Okay, whatever that may be Again, maybe an email newsletter, maybe an email blog, maybe, you know, doing events. It may be any of those things we've talked about. There is a lot more to building a good marketing plan and it's so much bigger than this short podcast. We do address it in the Professional Salesperson course, because you can't help somebody get what they want unless you meet them in the first place and you're able to enter into that sales conversation, that sales process.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Last point Marketing is only one thing that you as a business owner have to do to create and grow your business. If you can delegate it, I believe that'd be pretty smart. If you're going to do it yourself, then you just have to make sure that it doesn't take a whole day out of the week to implement it. You have more important things to do in the sales process once you find that qualified prospect Marketing is an important job and it's something that is big and vital and important in your business. But it's not your whole job. That's not what you do for a living. You've got to run the business and this is just a part of it. Bottom line marketing is that vital part of what we all need to do to become more visible and to find people to engage with for business. So identify the profile of your ideal client and choose a few platforms where your ideal client is going to show up and then use those for your marketing efforts. The best ones are where you personally interact with people, create a system that doesn't take a huge amount of your time to implement, and you can use that to meet and find and interact with a whole lot more qualified prospects.

Speaker 1: 15:29

Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the commission code to success in your business. Remember, go to morrissimscom for more information and in the meantime, hey, have a great week, get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes. I'm Morris Sims. Meet somebody new and we'll see you again next time right here on the commission code. Best wishes. I'm morris simms.