This question comes up all the time …
What’s more important, your brand, your marketing or your sales effectiveness?
The answer can simultaneously be all of them and none of them!
In business, the most important thing may well be your customer and contact list.
You can nurture your list really effectively without spending a lot of time on your brand. You can also sell to people without spending a ton on marketing. It’s also true that you can have some success in selling to those people without having much of an organised sales system.
Even if you collect prospects one at a time and then add them to your list, as long as you communicate with that list and consistently add value, you can probably make it work.
Your list is the most valuable asset you have on the front end of your business.
Branding lets more people know about you. Marketing gets more people onto your list and sales turns your list into money.
They’re all important, but the one thing you can fully control and that you can build sustainable business value on, is a responsive list.
So why do so many businesses ignore their list and fail to communicate with their clients in a consistent and meaningful way? Your list is all about trust and your list strategy is about being trustworthy.
Trust is built on four things:
- Congruence, you are authentic, you are who you say you are and you do what you promise.
- Concern, you care about your clients and their situation and you don’t judge.
- Competence, you demonstrate capability that others can rely on.
- Consistency, you are predictable, reliable and frequent – there are no surprises and you’re there for the long haul.
Your list strategy must deliver these four components of trustworthiness, to your prospects, through your engagement with them.
At its most foundational level, your list strategy is a critical business investment of time and money that you absolutely must make …
Then, when you do elevate your brand, amplify your marketing and power up your sales, your list strategy will 10X the results of all of them.
I’d love to know, what’s been your most successful list building strategy?