How do you go about finding Leads for business in Thailand?

How does the average business find new clients? Do you do it the old fashioned way, through networking, cold calls and golf? It may surprise many readers to this blog that yes, we still network regularly. I think you have to do a bit of everything till one thing really works for you.

Many companies will still swear by telemarketing, and there have been a few companies over the years that have almost killed the cold calling aspect of business by being too aggressive and overzealous when speaking to strangers on the telephone.

Recent figures show that even if you have a targeted database of people, it will be still very tough to glean new clients over the phone. Back in the 1980’s it was how we all got our customers, that and door knocking, and back then it was an expected part of business, companies and the general public were reasonably open to people knocking without appointments However things have changed and business must to!

Networking seems to have reached a saturation point for many, sadly there’s a section of the community at networking who have lost the plot and have just no idea what it really means or how to develop relationships for the future, and there have since emerged the:

Networking stereotypes

The Card Shark

My personal pet hate is the card shark, the employee who is paid to be there and get the minimum number of cards and go home, she thrusts their card in your hand and runs off once she has your card and has no time to listen to what you do.

Networking Card shark

Listen to ME!!

Then there is the boor who thinks that you are there purely to hear about how great their business is without ever listening to yours. Most people have sussed him out half way through the event and he stands alone with a sausage roll, thinking everyone else must be Luddites!

Biz-find Networking in Thailand

The Meal Ticket

The single girls are at least partly interested in you because they can at least work out how much money you get by digesting your story, but after a while they glaze over whilst they work out what kind of school your money will send her children to.

Show me the money

The Freeloader

Then the last stereotype looks at you as if you just stole his last sandwich when you reach to shake his hand, because he has no discernible business whatsoever and is not ever looking for clients he is just there for the free beer and girls, him and the ex-washing machine salesmen in a cheap suit now selling expat financial products.

I’m only here for the beer!

It certainly takes a lot of time to actually find someone who is a match for your business at network functions. I wait for the day when someone does the maths for networking and works out how many hours on average avoiding the chafe and finding good people with whom you can do business with, versus time taken getting there, the cost of events etc. to see whether it is worth it.

One last thing is I hate is: shallow prizes, you win the raffle; a voucher to spend $30 in a restaurant, whoopee! Only to find you have to spend $20 to redeem the voucher, Booooo!

I went to one event in UK a while back and their idea was for people to pin their business cards up on the wall and people who wanted to speak to the card owner would pin their business cards to the supplier’s card.

I thought to myself; would it not have been more effective if people wrote on a piece of paper what they were looking to buy; and the suppliers could pin their cards to their paper. I felt that would be a lot more valuable.

Branding V Marketing

The third most obvious way people find new clients is by marketing, through direct marketing like newspapers, trade shows, billboards Radio and TV.

Then there is the Internet where a lot of business people struggle to come to terms with their understanding of branding and ROI that comes from such an intangible concept.  New business mainly struggle massively with the premise of branding as they are so focused on doing things that will keep their business alive with cash flow and getting to that salaried point, that spending money on things that people only see subconsciously like banner advertising to raise awareness is alien to them. Yet is should not be and it takes a lot of education to make start-ups and SME’s aware of how effective banner ads can be.

online marketing Thailand

Social Media marketing is now widely recognised as a strategic arm of your marketing and must be considered, and all business should at the very least be educated to understand how social media can undermine any business or expand your brand massage massively and very cost effectively.

Now I see each day; jobs for PR and Social Media managers, as business finally understand the power of the worldwide web.

As a business person near the top echelons and or business owners, these concepts take many years to learn and experienced people with an acumen and deep understanding of the above concepts will wince when they are asked about the cost in time and money to have a decent grasp about how to find new clients.

Recently one of the top business schools worked out that average client acquisition (meaning all of the above activities including R&D, Sales support, and maintenance) costs business $2,000 USD per one client!

Then there is another level where you need years of knowledge to understand how to keep your clients, any experienced business scholar will tell you; that’s where the net profit is

What if there was an easier way?

What if you sold handbags and you lived in Phuket for example, and you are really new at business, with hardly any budget, but you know you have a great product at a great price and you just know when people see they will buy? What do you do then?

Well one thing you could do is visit Biz-find Thailand each day and click on the Business leads, there we have a list of all the things our business directory members are buying right now, and there could very easily be; leads for people sourcing handbag suppliers, as well as over 250 other categories of business.

Q: Cost to contact directly the company who is asking?

A: $10 for all the names in your category for a month.

SIGN UP NOW

We as business mentors feel that that is actually priceless for any business!

You can learn all about all the above stuff in seminars and educate yourself to be a Forbes cover page business once you have good cash flow from sales. So make Biz-find your first port of call , our sellers membership sends you emails of any new company asking for what you sell as soon as we receive them!

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