Day 208 - The 10% Prospecting Schedule

To build on last week's blog post, 2 Bevinco senior partners (Chuck Deibel - Ohio and Ian Foster - California) have introduced or maybe re-introduced me to a prospecting schedule. The crux of the schedule is the more people you contact the more client you will get.....sounds obvious, and well it is. However, if you don't make a prospecting schedule for you to follow then it may be as obvious. In many fields of business (not all) you can use the 10% rule, that is 10% of all the targets you contact will turn into clients. If you want to have 10 clients then you have to contact 100 potential targets. That is a lot of work, but it has to be done to be successful. The schedule Chuck and Ian have proposed is to see 20 prospects (4/day) in the first week. If all goes well during the initial contact meetings you should be able to secure 2 new clients or at the very least 2 new hot leads to follow up on. In week two, you must contact another 18 new targets and follow up on the 2 hot leads from the week before. This process really should continue forever, but every week as you actually get new clients you will have to reduce the number of new targets you contact so that you have to complete the client workload. Over the next 6 to 8 weeks I will be trying to follow my new prospecting schedule to obtain 5 new clients and I will let everyone know how I am doing. To do this I must contact 50 new targets! Although it doesn't exactly follow Chuck and Ian's schedule, it's a bit of a hybrid because I have 6 existing clients. Wish me luck.