Small and mid-sized businesses often fall for one common temptation - and it leads to all sorts of trouble. It is this: Once you have 'enough' customers in your sales funnel, you stop marketing and turn your attention to whatever other emergency is currently screaming at you. Truth be told, some even make that shift when the sales funnel is nowhere near full.
It's understandable, especially if you bear responsibility for a long list of tasks that need doing. You can't spend all of your time marketing, to the exclusion of customer service, sales, management, paperwork, and everything else piled on your plate.
There must be an upper limit, a line in the sand that demarcates a point named "Enough" - and there is. However, that line in the sand is twice as far as most business owners and marketing heads think it is.
Think of marketing as if you were fishing, so this becomes clear. Let's say you need ten fish to make your numbers.
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Got a nibble? Great - but it's not a catch (yet). Don't stop fishing.
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Got ten fish on ice? Great, but you shouldn't stop fishing quite yet.
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Got twenty fish on ice? Now you can stop.
Smart marketers market until they have twice as many deals in the bag as what they need. Why?
Here are three great reasons to double your marketing efforts:
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Full Funnels Give Freedom
The more you fill your pipeline, the more choices you have. If you have a service-based business, having an excess of interested prospects gives you the freedom to turn down clients and projects that aren't ideally suited for your services. You won't feel compelled to take on less than ideal clients, because you will know you don't have to.
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More Irons in the Fire Smokes Stress
When you have a lot riding on every prospect, because there are so few of them, you're likely to experience more stress. When you have more prospects in your funnel, landing any one particular prospect becomes less critical. Say goodbye to tossing and turning, worrying about whether you'll land that one client who seemed interested at first and is now unresponsive.
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The More Prospects, the More You Can Charge
The natural result of effective marketing is that you'll have more paying clients coming into your business. Supply and demand dictates that a full prospect funnel will lead to having more paying customers. More customers leads to higher prices. When you are in high demand, you make more money.
You simply can't crimp your prospect pipeline and expect to get the same results you'd get by marketing full-out. But if you'll aim for a goal that's twice as big as you've gone after before, you will reap the wonderful rewards that come with a full prospect funnel.
