Prospecting

Assuming that you are in business, you will need a steady flow of new customers. Much of the modern business literature talks about marketing, especially on-line, on the one hand. On the other side, there is a lot written about face-to-face sales technique and the dark arts of influence. Prospecting for new business today is still an essential part of the selling process. With internet marketing, the customer is becoming more and better informed.

Once the customer has identified their own need and made a decision to buy, they will then conduct their online search. The customer may or may not stumble upon your website, depending on how optimised your site is for the Search Engines. If your business has a strong traditional marketing presence or brand, they may visit your site, along with your competitors. Either way the customer is in the research frame of mind will probably build a short list of potential service providers. Hopefully you will be on this short list, so that your phone rings or your inbox pings, but “Hopefully you will be on this short list”, is not good enough for the professional salesperson. The successful sales person doesn’t wait for the phone to ring or email to ping. She makes things happen. Prospecting is how you make things happen.

Prospecting

Prospect is the first skill for you to practise. Think of prospecting for customers as gold prospecting. You are literally sifting through people and sorting out those who are ready to buy from those who aren’t.
For instance let’s say you have one hundred prospects. If you sorted them out by their likelihood to buy it may look something like this:

100 prospects:

30 People are ready to buy right now. They have their credit card ready. Don’t dilly-dally with these people. Take their credit card details there and then. They don’t want to hear about features and benefits; this might actually put them off buying. All they need to hear is “Sign here please and we can get started”. Make them a customer now.
30 People are shopping. This is a good group to spend time with, as you can tell them the benefits of you, your product and company. This is especially true if they are members of your niche market.
30 people are curious. Don’t waste much time with these people. Give them some information and let them come back to you later.
10 People will never buy from you. Ignore them.