Prospecting

Now we move from mindset to action. Your first customers rarely arrive on their own — you have to find them. Prospecting is the work of locating potential customers and sorting out who is worth contacting. Done well, it saves you weeks of wasted effort on people who were never going to buy.

Building a list of potential customers

Start concrete. Instead of thinking about "the market", make an actual list of names. Use the ideal customer profile from module 1 as a filter, and look where the customers actually are:

• Industry registers and membership lists (for example a trade association).
• The company register in Brønnøysund, if you need to find businesses of a certain type and size.
• LinkedIn, to find the right role in a company.
• Local networks, trade fairs and events in your industry.

For the founder with the booking system, a first list can simply be twenty salons in the local area, found on maps and websites, with the owner's name where possible. Twenty names is enough to start. You do not need a thousand.

Warm and cold channels

Contacts fall roughly into two groups:

• Warm channels are people you already have a connection to — former colleagues, people in your network, customers referred to you. Here the barrier is low and trust is already partly in place.
• Cold channels are people who do not know you. Cold email, phone or a LinkedIn message. Here the barrier is higher, but the reach is much greater.

The advice is simple: start warm. You should get your very first customers from your network, because it moves faster and lets you learn the sales conversation in a safe setting. Then expand into colder channels once you have refined the message.

Using network and referrals

The most underrated source of new customers is people you already know. Not because they will buy themselves, but because they can point you onward. A good referral is worth ten cold approaches, because the trust travels with the recommendation.

Be specific when you ask for help. "Do you know anyone?" rarely gets an answer. "Do you know a general manager at an accounting firm with under ten employees who struggles to log hours on time?" is easy to answer. The sharper the question, the easier it is for people to think of a name.

A small consultancy that landed its first three assignments got all three through former colleagues who knew what they were good at. That is the rule, not the exception, in the early phase.

Qualifying leads before you spend time on them

A lead is a potential customer you have spotted. Before you invest time, make a quick assessment: Do they fit the ideal customer profile? Are they big enough to have the problem, but not so big that the process becomes unmanageable for you right now? Is there a visible reason they would need you at this moment?

The point is not to be certain — you never will be until you have spoken with them — but to avoid wasting days on obvious dead ends. Split the list into "call first", "call later" and "not now". Then you start where the odds are best.

At the same time, be aware that prospecting is not a one-off job. The list empties as you contact people, and some drop off. Set aside a fixed block each week — for example an hour on Monday morning — to top it up with new names. Then the pipeline never dries out, and you avoid the panic that arises when you suddenly have no one left to contact. Steady topping-up beats intense effort in fits and starts.

Do this now

Make a list of 25 named potential customers that fit your ideal customer profile. Mark which are warm (you have a connection) and which are cold. Pick the five warmest, and write down who in your network could give you a referral to each of them.