The Difference Between Marketing and Prospecting

Want to learn the difference in Marketing and Prospecting?

Learn about the two pillars of building any business, and how to clearly define your prospect’s position.

The Difference Between Marketing and Prospecting

There’s two pillars of building any business. There’s prospecting and there’s marketing.

Prospecting is you reaching out to someone online, offline, cold market, warm market, Facebook, text message, face to face, etc. It’s you reaching out to someone directly.

Marketing is when someone reaches out to you based on something that you have done.

So the question is, “What do you do when someone reaches out to you? How do you handle it?”

First of all, you need to under your prospect’s position first.

Prospecting Positions

Position zero is someone who has never expressed any interest in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, someone that watches your video and reaches out to you is in a higher position. So depending on your video, those people would fall under position one. If your video was directly about your product, service, opportunity, then they may fall under position two. So you can say position one or two.

So, if I’m prospecting someone in position zero, they have not shown any previous interest, then you can ‘t make any assumptions.

But if someone reaches out to me, then I can call upon their position and say “Cool, thanks for reaching out to me. I’m just curious – what made you reach out? What was the number one reason that made you reach out to me today?”

I can call upon the position.

I might say, “Hey, I see that you live in Sacramento. I know we don’t know each other, but I’m looking to expand my business in Sacramento. Would you be at all open to take a look at what it is that I’m doing? I would love to chat with you if you’re open to it. If not, no big deal.”

So that is prospecting to a position zero.

But if someone reaches out to you, then they’re NOT in position zero. They reached out to you.

So then you can say something like, “Hey, I’m just curious. What made you reach out to me today?”

And you want to make sure you listen to the reason they give, because they may give me the keys to the kingdom. Or they may tell me, “Well, I’m really just looking to make money from home.”

Then I might reply, “Awesome. I’d be more than happy to share with you what I do to make extra money from home. Is this something that you’re serious about? I can show you a quick video that’ll show you exactly what to do.”

So whatever words they give me I’m going to use, but you always want to address the position.

[mashtweet tweet=”You always want to address the position.” text=”” username=”rayhigdon”]

Let’s say you do a Facebook Live and your Call to Action is, “reach out to me if you’re looking to make extra money from home.” So someone reaches out to you and you ask what made them reach out.

And they say, “I want to make some extra money from home.”

You say, “Awesome. So listen, I got this video that explains how I make extra money from home and how you could too. And I’m happy to send it to you. How soon would you be able to watch it?”

Then let’s say I send them the video and they agree the watch it, now they’re definitely in position two. You might even argue that they’re in position three. But they’re definitely in position two, at least. They reached out to me, and they watched the video.

Then let’s say I follow up with them, and I say, “Hey, what’d you like about the video.” And they say, “You know what? Hated it. Sucked. Total waste of my time.”

Fair enough, then I’m going to take the focus off the video, and I’m going to focus on, “Well, why did you even watch the video? What were you hoping to see?”

And they say, “Well, I was hoping I’d able to blah, blah, blah.” And you say, “Well, you may not have noticed this, but you actually can do that.” and explain to them how.

So playing the positions is the most important thing you can do. If you have a combination of what position they’re in and your tools and resources you can use it to your advantage. Not everyone’s going to love the video, and that’s okay.

I’ve recruited hundreds of people that hated the video. I don’t care about that. I’m going to say, “Well, man. I’m curious. What were you hoping to see?” And that grants you the power to use their positions in a powerful way.