An earlier version of this article was posted on Business Insurance Agents on 12 March 2009.
Suppose you are watching a James Bond movie and Agent 007 says to another character, “Tomorrow I am going to pick up my dream car.” If you know much about Agent 007, you will immediately have a mental picture of a gleaming white Aston-Martin hardtop. If you are not familiar with the James Bond character you will probably picture your own “dream car” whatever it is; perhaps it’s a Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari, or Lexis.
That describes a powerful marketing concept called “Front of the Mind Awareness.” A refinement of that concept, which is applicable to excellent telephone prospecting, is “Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness.”
Get a list of six hundred prospects that meet the demographic criteria of companies or individuals that buy the type of products and services that you sell. You can call those people every three to four weeks, providing that you change your prospecting offer every time you call. The first time you call the list, about seven percent of them will ask you not to call them anymore; so don’t. That leaves you with about 560 prospects on your list. It is easy to contact that many every three to four weeks.
If the way you do your prospecting leaves those people feeling good about each call they receive from you, you will be developing Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness in most of their minds. That means that anytime they are exposed to marketing, advertising, or cold calls about your type of products and services, most of them will immediately have favorable thoughts of you.
If you call them more frequently, a higher percentage will become your customers. However, if you push them for an appointment or try to engage them in a sales conversation, that will create the opposite effect.
People buy in their own time, for their own reasons. They do not buy because you need to make a sale this week. It is important that you are in frequent contact with your whole list so that you are there when they want to buy what you have to offer. The more often they hear from you, provided that your calls are very brief, informative, and free of any pressure, the greater positive affect it will have on your prospect’s minds. That will continuously increase Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness.
The end result is that almost all of your appointments will be with people who want to buy what you have been offering them. After they become your customers, provided that you continue to call them at the same intervals, they will be loyal clients for years to come.
You can learn more about this kind of prospecting by going to www.HighProbSell.com.
Author
well, I found my answer to “front of mind awareness.” I put the terms in the search feather of this web site and came up with Jacques Werth’s article published in the Business Insurance Agents periodical this year. (It’s still an odd term.)
🙂 Deb Adams
P.S. Good article!