You need a prospect to get a sale, right?

Therefore the more prospects you see, the more sales you achieve. Here's a table of ways, in approximately descending order. The top items reach huge numbers of people but cost the most too. (Although it would be interesting to discover the resulting price per lead or sale). The lower ideas can be free or close to it but they take time and effort.

1. Television commercials at peak viewing times.

2. Pr / News items on television.

3. Spam emails. (I don't suggest that you do this though)

4. Messages which go viral on the internet.

5. Editorial in major publications.

6. Radio editorial.

7. Radio commercials.

8. Advertisements in major newspapers.

9. Large numbers of links to your message across the internet.

10. Bulk faxing.

11. Bulk direct mail.

12. Adverts in specialist publications.

13. Flyers distributed professionally.

14. Inserts in specialist publications ? chamber of commerce, trade journals etc.

15. Professional outbound telemarketing.

16. Free web advertising ? Craigslist.com, Usfreeads.com, Kiiji.com etc.

17. Inserts in publications.

18. Adverts in local papers.

19. Presentations at networking events.

20. Speaking at conferences.

21. Personal telephone cold-calling.

22. Personal direct mail.

23. Door-to-door canvassing.

24. Sitting and waiting for the phone to ring.

There you have 23 viable ways to let potential customers know how you can help them. Turn the list upside down if you can't afford peak time TV spots.

The best sales method I ever found was a well-written (which really means lucky) press ad. I ran it for several years and it brought in sale after sale. No effort required, I just had to renew the ad. It was very sustainable. And that is a key consideration in prospecting ? can you stick with the method you are using. Here is a cautionary tale about a man who got this about as far wrong as is possible.

I sat next to him on a plane once and he told me his tale. He is (was) an artist and his paintings had started to sell, so he decided that a nice place to promote himself was at a resort city in Florida. To fund the venture, he used the money he had obtained by selling his house in England An exhibition was set up in a gallery and he arranged full-page ads in the local paper to publicise his event. This was very expensive, in the thousands.

Unfortunately, the number of resulting sales was low and he had to abandon his art career and look for a regular job and a rented place to live in.

The biggest mistake? Just about everything ? new market, no experience of that market, high-priced advertising without a test, all the working capital blown in weeks.

I'm sure you won't do anything like that. The safest way is to start with a free method and if you find you are making money, work up the list with small tests to see if a new medium will produce cost-effective results. Then when your marketing is working well small-scale, roll it out a bit bigger.

Ultimately, advertising has the effect of bringing qualified prospects to you, which means that you then get an easy sale. The more you tell them in your message, including prices, the less work you have to do to close. There is a trade-off of course, if you write teaser ads with little hard information and lots of hype, you get more prospects, but on average of lower quality. Tell them everything and you don't get nearly as many calls, but selling then is extremely easy. Experiment to find out which approach works best in your business.