How Winners Sell e-Zine -- January 2004

HOW WINNERS SELL

strategies that work e-Zine: January 2004

How Winners Prospect

by Dave Stein

Author of How Winners Sell

If you are currently in a situation with a weak pipeline and few, if any, resources available to generate leads for you, you may have to do what so many salespeople avoid, and that is to prospect!

I'm finding that more of my clients are placing some or all the responsibility of prospecting on their salespeople. Although some salespeople say it's not their job, they are expected to prospect and to prospect successfully.

Effective prospecting is a critical component of sustainable sales success. However, prospecting is not selling. You may be a well-trained and/or experienced salesperson. But your training may not have included prospecting. Or perhaps you never prospected at all. In either case, read on.

The output of prospecting is a list of qualified leads that may buy your product or service. Selling begins only after a lead is categorized as qualified. If you start selling too early, you run the risk of pigeonholing your products and services before you have the opportunity to understand your prospect’s requirements. That generally leads to commoditization—where price becomes the most important buying criteria.

Winners understand that, as with effective selling, prospecting should not be done by the seat of one's pants. You need a plan. That means an objective assessment of your situation, a goal, and resulting strategies and tactics to achieve that goal. So if you aren't comfortable with prospecting or haven't had to do it, I would like to share with you my plan that has worked for many of those winners:

Assessment. … eight of the considerations for filling the “new business” pipeline (two examples from the full article)

What have been your traditional sources of business leads: blind RFPs, referrals, networking, business partners, your company's telemarketing function? What statistics can you find that will provide you with guidance on where your efforts should be best invested?

What are your current time commitments to customers, internal meetings, etc.? Realistically, how much time can you dedicate to prospecting?

Goal…….

Strategies. … 14 proven strategies (3 partial examples from the full article):

Commit to following up. Lots of opportunities are lost because the salesperson gets distracted or simply does not keep on top of potential business opportunities. Have your follow-up materials at hand ….

Get your messages and talking points down cold…. Don't be afraid to use a script….

Provide value at every point of contact….

Tactics…..

If you don't like to prospect or have convinced yourself that you can't do it effectively, get out of your comfort zone and try the approach I outlined above. It will make you money!

To read the entire 1200-word article, including the additional assessment components and strategies, order here.

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