Prospecting is one of the most important (and often forgotten) steps in the sales process.
It is important to prospect every lead because you never know what will happen. You may have a lead that is not interested in your product or service, but they may be interested in something else. Prospecting every lead will help you find other potential customers.
What Is Prospecting?
Prospecting is the act of finding potential customers. The word “prospect” comes from the Latin word “prospicere,” which means “to look forward.”
Prospecting is a vital part of any sales process, and it is often the first step in the sales process.
Why You Need To Prospect Every Lead?
If you don’t prospect a lead before selling, you may not be able to sell the product or service to them (effectively).
This could lead to you trying to sell products and services to the wrong customer base. Which may result in a lot of “NOs.”
7 Ways To Start Prospecting
1. Know Your Customer
Before you can even start selling, you need to know your customer.
If a customer fits what your company is selling, it doesn’t always mean they will buy from you.
Studies have shown that more than 50% of customers that fit your “prospect” list will not buy from you.
So instead of trying to sell to 1,000 customers that will 50% buy from you, why not find the customer that fits your exact criteria so you have a much higher chance of them buying from you.
To do this, look at your top 5 customers right now. Take a deep dive into what they have in common. Understand why they bought from you.
This way, you can have an exact list of criteria to look for when you are prospecting a lead.
2. Where Are My Customers
What we recommend you do is make a list of your top 5-10 best customers.
You want your best customers because in most cases they are your most profitable customers.
Now, make a list of where you found these customers. Was it referred to you? Did it come from a Facebook ad? You met them in a networking meeting?
All of this information will aid you in creating a strategy for meeting potential clients at the appropriate locations.
3. Call, Call, Call
If you are scared to call your leads, you can’t be an EvilSalesman.
Most people get scared to call because they start selling.
Remember, we are not talking about selling here, we are talking about prospecting.
You will not know your customers if you do not call them.
This is why you need to cold call them.
And you need to call them after the sale.
You need to call them and find out more information about them to help your prospect better.
4. Make It Personal
Whether you’re sending them an email or messaging them on a social media platform, you need to make it personal.
Most salesman copy and paste scripts that they find on Google and hope to get the answer that they want.
You need to treat these scripts as a template for you to get started.
For example, if you see something on their Facebook page about their favorite sports team maybe message them saying how good that team did this weekend.
When trying to become a salesperson most people forget about being the person and just focus on the sale.
5. Ask For Referrals
It might be hard to come up with a list of criteria for your perfect customer.
But you already have great customers. And they have friends, family, and colleagues that fit the type of customer you are looking for.
You can prospect much easier if you just ask your best existing customers for more customers.
6. Be On A Schedule
Humans are creatures of a routine.
If you create a schedule on prospecting every single day and you stick to that schedule, you will have your best results.
For example, the first thing you can do when you come into the office checks your social media accounts and message all your leads and customers a personal message. After that, you might want to start picking up the phone and calling other leads to see if they will fit your prospecting criteria list.
Most salespeople fall out of a schedule or a routine. This leads them to poor results which ultimately leads them to quit.
7. Prospecting Is Not Selling
This is called prospecting not selling.
Can you call anyone and start selling them anything? Yes, you can.
But this is not an effective way to do it.
If you want to get the most results out of your sales process, prospecting is very important.
When you start prospecting your leads, your first email or phone call cannot be a sales pitch.
The whole purpose of prospecting is to eliminate people that will not fit your products or services in finding that exact customer.
This will make your whole sales process much easier and much faster!