The ability to bring in new business is one of the most crucial skills for today’s sales professionals. No matter how good they are at face-to-face selling, if they can’t schedule meetings with prospects, they can’t win new business.

By qualifying the right prospects, it’s possible to grow steadily and avoid some of the frustrating ups and downs that come with being a sales pro. But prospecting has traditionally been one of the least liked and least understood components of selling. However, it’s critical to survive today.

The goal of prospecting

Efficient prospecting helps salespeople:

• add new prospects
• replace lost customers, and
• sell new products to existing customers.

Attitude counts

So how do your salespeople become better prospectors? A big part of the answer lies in attitude. Prospecting, like any other selling skill, can be viewed positively or negatively. Whatever kind of prospecting they choose to do, the results are highly influenced by attitude. Determination, perseverance, enthusiasm and a positive attitude are the backbone of prospecting success.

Training tip: Ask your sales reps to share their most effective techniques for finding and qualifying prospects. What techniques do they use to sort out hot and cold leads?

An art and talent

Prospecting is an art and a talent. It takes courage, discipline, practice, patience and desire. The correct mindset leads to successful prospecting and, ultimately, more lucrative sales.

It’s always easy to put off prospecting until a later day, when circumstances will be better, but high-performing salespeople prospect every day.

They schedule time to prospect daily. They give the prospecting process priority — often placing it in the same category as meeting with important customers.

Finding prospects

Prospecting offers incredible opportunities, but the process demands a unified, consistent approach.

Some suggestions:

• Never stop looking for potential new customers. You increase your risk in sales when you work with too few customers and prospects.
• Do your homework. Learn what your typical customers do and what their objectives are. Then look for other potential buyers who have the same needs and interests.
• Jump when your rivals make changes. When your competitors make changes to their staff or processes this often leaves their customers feeling neglected or underserved, and causes problems with service, quality and delivery. There’s no better time to make serious inroads with your competition’s customers.

Qualifying prospects

The goal of prospecting is to identify those who fit your company’s customer profile and who, when properly cultivated, hold potential to become long-term customers. Even the most talented salesperson with the best product or service can’t sell to a poor prospect.

So it’s critical to qualify all your prospects early.

Some key questions to consider when qualifying prospects:

• What is the prospect’s business needs? Why does the prospect need your product or service? When and how often might the prospect use your product or service?
• Who is the decision-maker? Are there multiple decision-makers or is there one key buying authority? Getting to the wrong person will not only waste time, but it may prevent you from meeting the real decision-maker.

Build key relationships

Top salespeople engage in rigorous self-promotion and become known to the greatest number of influential people. Take every opportunity to get out among them.

Here’s how:

• Join two or three community organizations outside of work. Top prospects often join local organizations and contribute to making their towns and cities better places to live.
• Make copies of interesting articles, studies and reports to give out to potential buyers. Your thoughtfulness will be noticed and gain you a reputation as a knowledgeable resource.
• Cultivate referrals. Studies prove that many prospects like to meet salespeople through referrals. Top salespeople are masters at turning existing customer relationships into new sales. They do it by consistently asking for referrals. The best referral is from a present customer. The second best is from a previous customer. The third best is one referred to you by another trusted professional.

Tags: prospecting, qualifying prospects, referrals, relationships, sales meeting, training