What keeps them from slipping away — Kelford Labs Daily

What keeps prospects from slipping away?

Let’s say you meet someone at a networking event, and they’re interested in what you do.

Or you post something on LinkedIn, and you get a few interested commenters.

Or you get introduced to a potential client, but they’re not quite ready to buy yet.

What do you do?

What do you get them to do?

What I mean is: If you’re talking to someone who’s interested, but not ready to purchase, do you have a way to keep them engaged until they’re ready?

That’s the key benefit to creating regular content. It allows you to keep interested prospects in your orbit without pressuring them into buying (and subsequently chasing them away).

It gives them something to do, and you something to offer, that’s more appealing than “buy now, or never.”

At that networking event—if you publish a blog, newsletter, or podcast, for instance—you could invite them to subscribe. I find networking events profoundly awkward to attend, but knowing I’ve got something to offer the people I meet beyond “check out my website” goes a long way to making it more enjoyable and effective.

On LinkedIn, you can have your custom button (if you’re paying for Premium) link over to your website or landing page for your content. Now, when you get interested commenters, you can direct them to find out more about your perspective and philosophy by visiting your content (and you have something to talk about when you comment on others’ posts).

And if you’re introduced to someone who’s not ready to buy, you can demonstrate your value until they are, by sending them content you’ve already published. And by writing your thoughts ahead of time, you have stock phrases, analogies, and examples you can pull from instead of saying, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

But when we don’t have something to send people to—to keep them in our orbit—we often want to add pressure to the sale.

Or we simply let them slip away.

The purpose of content goes beyond drumming up interest, it’s not as much about SEO anymore.

It’s for moving prospects one step closer to a purchase. First, by letting them know you have expertise in their field. Then, by revealing tradeoffs you’ve made to provide extra value to them in particular.

And then to keep them engaged during the sales process and after.

Because, if we’re not publishing our expertise, how would anyone know we have it?

And if we’re not providing content to help make our prospects more comfortable buying from us, are we forcing them to choose too soon—and losing out on opportunities?

So, if you want help figuring out what type of content you can produce that’s efficient, effective, and—most importantly—actually fun to create, just reply to this email.

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