28 Aug Prospecting vs marketing, do you know the difference?
Whether you’re in the business of selling products or services there are two critical pillars that everyone uses; marketing and prospecting. In the terms of business there are several ways to describe what these efforts actually look like.
Loosely put, prospecting is when you actively reach out to someone directly. This can be anyone from your warm market to your cold market. It is the attempt to make that one-to-one connection allowing you to inform the prospect on your products and/or service.
While on the other hand marketing is an action that is taken to reach serval people at once, so they become familiar with you or your brand. There is often a strategy involved that will encourage people to reach out to you instead of the other way around.
The reason it is important to point out these differences is so you can better assess how to grow your business and put a strategy in place. More often than not prospecting seems to the be the most challenging part, partly because people think marketing is one and the same with prospecting and partly because it pushes people to go outside of their comfort zones.
The ideal relationship is to create a synergy between your prospecting and marketing efforts. This will allow you to create a lead (sales) funnel. The top of this funnel may include people you have never talked to while the bottom may include people you have made a sale to or are about to make a sale to. Prospecting is how you will close the sale and keep the customers happy moving forward, where marketing can help speed up the sale cycle or even bring new prospects your way.
As you begin to consider marketing you want to make sure the efforts will align with your business. Maybe your marketing efforts should include a booth at a local event or maybe it should include a print ad. Even though this will differ for each business, having people become aware of your product or service will put you one step closer to prospects, it may even get them reaching out to you.
On the other hand, when you are consider prospecting it is important to know what position your prospect is in. Are they familiar with the product or have they never heard of it? Are they interested in the product or the opportunity? Are you reaching out to them if so, what led you to them? Assessing where your prospect stands will help you formulate the best plan of action on how to present the product and/or opportunity you are offering. At this phase you will be making one-on-one connections that will allow you take them from a prospect to a customer or even a partner.
In relationship marketing it is critical to place an emphasis on prospecting and truly managing these connections. After all the whole business is built off of relationships and the ability to stay connect and help one another grow. However, we don’t want to forget about marketing as this will continue to peak interest and raise awareness.
If you are looking to grow your business or develop as a leader we encourage to take a look into the opportunities FITTEAM offers.
Sources:
https://rayhigdon.com/the-difference-between-marketing-and-prospecting/