Let’s get back to basics for a moment on the subject of new business.

We consistently preach our philosophy and mantra when speaking with prospects: we maintain a relationship-building approach that doesn’t shove the company down the prospect’s throat, but instead shows them, through respectful, yet consistent and useful contact, that the company understands their challenges. (Now we didn’t invent the concept, mind you, as its called lead nurturing, amongst other labels, but it’s one we’ve fully made our own.)

So it’s always heartening to see it touted by others, and specifically in this case, at the site marketo.com. Marketo, if you’re not familiar, is “the fastest growing provider of marketing automation and revenue-building best practices.”

While their focus is on B2B, they have a great (and free) guide called The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing. It’s a bit lengthy, but their tips can be very easily adapted to your own new business and it’s well worth a look. A couple of points to take away, the first slightly modified by me:

Up to 95 percent of qualified prospects on your Web site are there to research and are not yet ready to talk . . . but as many as 70 percent of them will eventually engage you.

Think about this in terms of your own new business efforts. Quite often, a visit to your site or a show of initial interest from a mail or email campaign doesn’t translate to immediate work-in-hand. And this is where companies so often fall short-they stop too early, sometimes after only one follow up email or phone call!

I altered the following chart to read “new business”, and I love these tips:

That last bit, “How can you tell” should be at the top of your new business road map. Per the report:

Most non-sales-ready leads will eventually be ready — and it is up to you to both provide them with relevant information and to be there when they are ready to make a buying decision.

Take this advice to heart-it will serve you well.

Download The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing here.

The blog tends to get overshadowed these days, doesn’t it? With all the other social platforms out there, we’ve heard more than once about the death of the blog.

But from a new business standpoint, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

You can have the greatest Facebook page in the world, but if your actual .com or blog is the first place prospects visit, you have to make it work for you with relevant and meaningful content.

Which leads me to an interesting post by Steven Hodson on the Shooting at Bubbles blog.

He doesn’t discriminate between a personal and a business blog specifically, but for the purpose of this post, I’m writing in the context of business. He makes a great point about posts becoming veiled cold calls:

Well, the short of it is that blogging should never be about the cold call.

When you start writing only to try and get your foot in that door you aren’t just cheating yourself of an enjoyable moment you are also cheating your reader.

When you become the machine behind the counter performing more by rote than by love of what you are doing your readers will feel it.

We’ve had success integrating client blog content into our new business reach-outs, but it only works if that content doesn’t shove the company down the reader’s throat. In fact, the company is rarely mentioned-it’s about the reader, (in this case, the prospect) their world, and their challenges.

It may be a stretch to say you have to love the content you’re writing, but I agree completely with Steven, it needs to come from the heart.

If you’re blogging for your company as part of your overall new business program, take a look at your last several posts: are they disguised cold calls or meaningful, useful communication?

Recently, I read a great post on Mike Myatt’s N2Growth blog Stop Selling and Add Value, and wanted to share it. I know the title of my post is a bit kumbaya, but it’s the way we (at RSW/US) represent and reach out on behalf of our clients. And if you’re handling new business internally, this is how you should be handling it as well.

Before I throw in my two cents on how Mike’s post relates to new business, here are some key points from his post:

Trust me when I tell you that your prospects and customers have heard it all before. They can see the worn-out, old-school closes coming a mile away. They can sniff antiquated selling strategies, and will immediately tune out on presentations not deemed relevant.

If your sales force is still FAB-selling, spin-selling, soft-selling, or using any number of outdated/one-size-fits-all selling methodologies, your sales are suffering…whether you realize it or not.

Frankly, most people I know would rather talk to a knowledgeable customer service person over a sales rep any day of the week.

The reason for this should be obvious: the perception is that a customer service professional is providing information and helping them meet their needs. A salesperson is trying to sell them something.

Call me crazy, but I don’t want to talk to someone who wants to manage my account, develop my business, or engineer my sales. I want to communicate with someone who wants to service my needs or solve my problems.

As you can see from the above, Mike’s post is focused more on selling a product, but it can be applied directly to any new business effort.

The key, of course, is being able to position your firm appropriately so that you have the opportunity to help them meet their needs. That, of course, is the hardest part.

Sure, you want an internal new business person who has something of the hunter mentality, but they also need to have a healthy dose of the farmer mentality. If you shove your firm down their throat with every call, you’ll get nowhere-and 100 calls a day won’t get you anywhere either if you aren’t asking questions AND listening to the answers. Mike sums it up well with this statement:

The reality is that until I know that you care more about meeting my needs than yours, you’ll remain on the outside looking in. By the way, in order to understand my needs you have to actually know something about me.

Prospecting words to live by.

Click here for Mike’s full post.