The deafening silence we’re experiencing after sending out 43,000 emails through or demand generation platform is music to my ears. It means our prospects are sleeping, at least, that’s how we refer to it.
When we build a database for a client, we pluck off the low hanging fruit – those prospects who are ripe for the asking because today they happen to be in a crisis NOW we can fix, or are annoyed with their current provider NOW, or finally got their budget approved NOW, or just got yelled at by their boss to fix the situation NOW, or whatever the lucky reason is we landed in their email box today, right NOW.
The ripe, low hanging fruit is a precious few. Everyone else is still sleeping, still ripening. Demand generation lets you gradually provide the nutrients they need to ripen into a client.
Demand generation is a funny name for this process. It isn’t an immediate grab, as its name might imply. You don’t reach out and demand prospects visit your website, buy your product, or engage your services.
Rather, demand generation is a quiet whisper, much like a polite interruption, rather than the rude demonstrative statement that its nomenclature implies. It’s an invitation to a conversation about the topic at hand (you should always include a question, an invitation to have a two-way communiqué), and to see, eventually, if there’s an opportunity to work together.
Then, one day, you’ll get lucky again, and that email will land in the inbox at exactly the right moment, and that prospect will be ready to talk, deal, and buy.
What do you do while you wait? You go after other, more ripe fruits, those closer to being ready, those who have already started a conversation, those who have indicated they’re in the ballpark but just not ready to bat (to change up my metaphors a bit).
As long as you let the sleepers rest, and keep feeding them, those who are already awake will give you plenty of work to do.
