We have to talk about prospecting

pool-prospecting-clients-system

Every business needs to prospect for new clients and customers, as well as prospect for new business in existing client accounts. Even non salespeople often need to reignite past business relationships and form new ones, internally or externally. You don’t need to be the primary salesperson or business development manager to benefit from knowing how to prospect well. Any call or contact you make to another person whose attention you want so you can have them consider what you have to offer or propose is, technically, a prospecting call.

Prospecting is the identification and pursuit of new opportunities. In sales, it is the pursuit of new business opportunities with new or existing clients.

In other business roles it can be the pursuit of opportunity with a colleague in another department, bringing a new idea to a team or your boss, approaching a prominent person to be a keynote speaker at an event, and so on.

How many phone calls, emails and texts do you make and send each day?

How many of these phone calls, emails and texts are seeking to capture the attention of receiver and call them to action?

How many of these phone calls, emails and texts fall flat and do not achieve their purpose?

Whether it is making a phone call or sending an email or text, capturing someone’s attention while they are in the midst of something else and getting them to agree to talk to you about what you propose is prospecting.

Prospecting is not the most important business or sales skill to master, but it’s the first thing that has to happen for the sales or opportunity process to begin. It’s the oxygen that fuels the fire of sales and new opportunities.

However, prospecting is regarded as one of the most, if not, the most scary aspect of selling. People are worried about getting rejected, not knowing how to approach a prospecting call and making a fool of themselves.

However, like anything this skill can be taught and the process is easy:

  • Determine the opportunity – what opportunity do you want to offer?
  • Identify your prospect – the person(s) you want to present the opportunity to
  • Create a Compelling Business Reason (CBR) – determine what is important to that person and craft a CBR that will position the opportunity as relevant to them
  • Contact and qualify your prospect – call the person and present your CBR seeking their interest in discussing the opportunity in more detail

We can use prospecting skills and the process to contact anyone.

Using prospecting etiquette can make a big difference to the effectiveness and outcomes of any call.

Think of all the people who have called us and waffled on, not getting to the point, umm’ing and ahh’ing because they didn’t know how to effectively position what they wanted to say to us.

Think of all the misunderstandings between colleague and departments because people did not know how to position an opportunity effectively from their internal prospect’s perspective.

Think of all the missed opportunities because people didn’t make the call at all.

The saying goes ‘If you never make the call, then the answer is always NO.’

That’s not good for anyone. Whether you have a product, service, idea, or project initiative to offer to someone else and get their buy-in you are in sales and you need to prospect.

That is why we believe that everybody lives by selling something.

Sure, we get NOs – a lot. But is usually because people are not ready yet so call back when they are.

Make the call, after all what is the worst thing that can happen? The other person says NO. But they may also say Yes.

Welcome to selling.

Having a call plan or system, making time to prospect every day, and choosing your state of mind and your attitude is critical to prospecting and selling success.

If you think prospecting is a vital business skill you would like to master then you might like to do our online Sales Essentials Prospecting module.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au 

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