The Lead Hunt Workbook- Exercises for Building a Clientele

building skills of its highly valued software engineers” will have an easier time identifying potential clients and thus a more successful rate of return on networking.

This lead hunt workbook is crafted so that you spend time thinking fully and deeply about the challenges and daily life of your prospective client. In doing so, you identify a rich and diverse landscape with many different points of entry. For example by imagining where your client or decision-maker might go to release stress, you have opened access to a desk or bulletin board to post your business card. A casual conversation at that facility or program has a greater probability of piquing the interest of another attendee. By speculating on the professional materials they read you may have uncovered an untapped resource for placing a unique advertisement. By intuiting which organizations your audience might belong to, you have found entre to local networking opportunities.

The workbook comprises a series of exercises that require imagination, thought, and research. This is especially true of the section in building your elevator speech, which helps to clarify your skills niche and niche clientele. (An elevator speech is a thirty second or less explanation of what you do, for whom you do it, and the benefits of your work. Using just a few sentences, it is intended to pique the interest of the listener while establishing your credibility and demonstrating how you stand apart from others.)

Not all roads lead to success. If you find you are struggling with some of these exercises, enlist the help of another coach. Often the synergy of a brainstorming session with coaching colleagues is the perfect solution to a stalled search. Or, if motivation, ambivalence and blocked vision (perhaps an inner critic who is talking too loudly) stand between you and a productive lead-hunt, it is time to enlist the paid services of a professional coach. Helping people feel confident, balanced, and in touch with inner strengths is what coaches do.

A Caveat

This lead hunt focuses on the architecture of building leads, the first step in building your practice. Engaging the potential client, i.e., crafting conversations, including your introduction, informational interview, proposal for services etc. and building relationships, — is outside the purview of this workbook.