The Worst Number In Sales
Written by Dave Lorenzo on July 26, 2016 / Sales Strategy
ONE is the worst number in sales.
Yet every business owner, sales executive and professional is obsessed with it.
Everybody wants that ONE great client that they can live off. To get that client, most people call me looking for the ONE way to boost their revenue or the ONE thing they should be doing to get more clients.
Then they want to know why their client acquisition tactics don’t work when they only apply them ONE time.
The number ONE is disastrous for you. Here are three reasons why:
First Reason: If you only have ONE major client you are doomed.
Imagine you had ONE big client who delivered 80% of your revenue. Life would be great, right?
Only ONE person calling on the phone each week/day/hour.
Only ONE set of problems to address.
Only ONE personality to adjust to handling.
And if that client is big, I mean really big, that could be all you ever need. Right?
I got a call from a guy in exactly that situation. He had a great big business client. The company had been a client for 20 years. It made his family comfortable. It made him comfortable. He was so comfortable that he had not thought about sales in 18 years.
The client was an automotive company.
Once they filed for bankruptcy protection, they could no longer pay him.
Apply this scenario to your business. If you have one client who makes up more than 20% of your business, you are in trouble.
Second Reason: If you only have ONE way of acquiring clients you are doomed.
Have you ever been to a business website and seen the fantastic content they have available?
They post videos, they have experts write articles, they do webinars…
It’s all great stuff.
The reason they do this is to attract people who are searching for their services. They create outstanding content and post it often. And Google loves it.
Today.
What happens when the algorithm changes?
What happens when a big competitor spends huge money advertising to the same target audience?
All that great content disappears.
They may get some clients as a result of their content strategy. They may boost their credibility when people go to their website and read their fantastic articles. But at any give time they are vulnerable to the threat of a larger competitor destroying their marketing influence in one shot.
You need a minimum of 20 – yes 20 – different ways to attract clients to your law firm. These should be spread over as many forms of media as possible.
This means 2-5 tactics on the Internet, 2-5 networking events, 2-5 speaking venues, 2-5 trade magazines to which you submit articles, 2-5 key referral sources, 2-5 groups of people you mail to, and so on.
The more ways you have of building a client base the faster you will grow and the more secure you will be in your growth.
Third Reason: If you only apply your client acquisition tactics ONE time you are doomed.
If you do any of this stuff ONE time it will not work. I have clients who get an article placed in a trade magazine once and they wonder why they don’t have thousands of new people lined up to work with them.
The same holds true for a speaking engagement. A client told me last week that he only got five new clients from his last speaking gig…and he was upset.
Marketing tactics are like sex. If you only do it once you will not be happy.
Give every marketing tactic at least three opportunities to succeed. Three times. If it doesn’t work, move on.
As you can imagine, most people will ignore the advice contained in this article.
The one person who takes action based upon it will beat his competitors’ brains out.
Will you be that one?
Here are some additional resources to help improve your sales:
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