How to create trust with prospects you don’t know
Gaining confidence with entirely new people is not an easy thing to do. Many of the opportunities you’ll meet will be cold prospects, who don’t know anything about your firm or you.
So, how can you encourage a favourable perception from them? What can you do, share, and enact to turn yourself into a legitimate contender to win their services? Stick with this article, and we’ll give you a few crucial tips, which have already helped our clients before.
Understand what cold prospects are
A big part of winning these new clients is how you position yourself. You’ll need to make yourself appealing for the unknown candidate who has the budget and needs services like yours. More importantly, you need to make sure you target them within a specific timeframe, i.e. when they are actively searching for a solution like yours.
Having several things in mind is useful to prepare for, if you’re going to attract these cold prospects:
- These prospects don’t know you at all.
- They have no idea who to trust, and you are among those they don’t trust (or maybe they don’t even know of you).
- They will not come to you directly at first; they are only looking for the best solution among the many available.
- Prospects will do their own research about your firm and you, to build a picture of your credentials and suitability.
Most of these problems look like they are impossible to overcome. However, the vast majority of prospects are precisely like this. Their numbers far surpass the number of people connected to your network. Thus, you cannot only stick to referrals and similar prospects as they are too few and will not enable you to grow. You must prepare for prospects to get to know you easily and you must be proactive..
All of this makes attracting cold prospects a necessity. Understanding them and what they want is the first thing you need to do if you’re going to gain their trust.
Methods for attracting cold prospects
There are several things you can do to attract these potential clients and gain their trust.
Building an ideal client profile that will help you immensely. Take a look at this Forbes article on how to do it. When you create your perfect client profile, then you’ll have to share it in as many ways you can. Use your website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google listings, and all other platforms through which you can increase your brand’s popularity and exposure.
The marketing campaign you’re using needs to be built in a way that speaks to your client’s needs and wants, as well as those of potential clients. In essence, your marketing campaign needs to be a thought leadership campaign.
Every thought leadership campaign targets the ideal client and offers ideas that answer their biggest problems. Your marketing campaign needs to do the same to be successful.
If you manage to build an effective thought leadership campaign, the cold prospects will find you on their own, while seeking online advice and researching for advisors. When they do, they will see that what you offer is precisely what they need. Then they’ll reach out to you on their own by getting in touch; ‘Liking’ an article, leaving a comment on a blog, ‘Following your page’, subscribing to a newsfeed or newsletter, and even emailing or calling you directly. The only thing for you to do at that stage is to be prepared to act when they do!