The first skill you need to have is ability to regularly generate qualified leads. You must consistently build your list of prospects if you are to grow your business. Your business will not grow if you market to same, stagnant population over and over again. While there will be a certain percentage of people who choose to buy from you after repeated contact with your marketing material, amount who buy will always be limited by size of list to which you market.

How often do you add to your list of qualified prospects?

Here are five steps you can take to improve your prospect building skills.

Focus On Client Needs Whether you print a brochure, advertise in industry periodicals or use search engines to generate traffic to your web site first thing your marketing materials must do is get noticed. One of best ways to have your future clients notice you is to use words in your marketing materials that focus on their needs. By using such words your clients will immediately associate your ad with their problem or unmet need.

For example, if you are a patent attorney your ads will have a much better chance of being noticed and acted upon by those who need your service if you use words, “Get paid for your invention” instead of “Patent Attorney”. Getting paid is what an inventor wants. You may be proud of your status as an attorney but your clients are interested in results you provide that solve their problem.

Be sure you use words in your marketing material that focus on your clients’ needs. They will get noticed more often.

Eliminate Waste Another step you can take to improve your ability to generate leads is to eliminate unproductive marketing methods. Marketing takes time, money and effort. If your tactics are not generating results you want stop using them and try something new. Of course, in order to separate good tactics from bad you need to measure effect of individual marketing efforts.

Perhaps you run same ad in two different newspapers. If you don’t know that ad in “paper number two” is generating 95% of your prospects you will never know that it would be a smart move to reallocate money you spend in “paper number one”.

What steps can you take to measure effect of individual marketing tactics?

I want to go over a three-step outline for your marketing which are:

1)Surveys

2)Getting Attention

3)Postage

Marketing surveys save you from flying blind in your business marketing strategies and are best way to find out what you should be offering, to whom and how. When you don't really know what to put in your direct mail marketing it's because you haven't done your research.

In order to get response you would like on your direct mail marketing campaign, one area you need to look at is whether or not you are using a survey to find out what to say to your public. You may immediately answer “No – I don’t survey.” But truthfully, it’s very possible you do and just don’t realize it….read on.

You know your market quite well because you already sell to them. You’re unwittingly surveying all time. Take this example:

An optometrist has an optical boutique. He knows that biggest market for his eyewear are women from ages of 40 to 65 years old. How does he know that? His frame inventory is constantly being restocked fives times more than his men’s frame stock or even children’s. And types of women’s frames are ones compatible with no-line bifocals. Interesting! Let’s look at what else this optometrist knows. He knows that these women pay a higher price point for their eyewear because products he keeps reordering are from more upscale designers so these women probably have more discretionary income. That is what I mean by surveying unwittingly.

Now let's take an example where you are sure you have no data:

You are a mortgage broker and you don't know what to say to people to get them to refinance their property, yet this is area you specialize in. You assume that best deal will attract more customers. You conduct a marketing survey, or get a marketing survey conducted for you that asks people indirectly for their attitudes and emotions concerning refinancing and what would be advantages and disadvantages. You find majority of people would like to refinance but think it is a very complicated procedure and so they never try. From this information you are able to determine what tone and message of your advertising should take.

So, what should your promotion say? How about "We'll take hassle out of refinancing for you. Find out how." You will get a response. You could send out thousands of promotional pieces telling your prospects that you can get them lowest rate, but that isn't their concern. Their concern is that it's too complicated. Do you see how you could miss? A survey is answer.

It is smart business to design a survey (or have one designed) to send out to your past customers that will keep you in know, and not in dark.

Now let’s go into next logical sequence of how to break first barrier of getting attention, so “button” you found from your survey hits them before they throw away your promotion before ever even reading it.

Ditch Envelopes!