Every manager has told you that prospecting is the life blood of your business. We say don’t do it. Prospecting is the activity of a sales laborer and not a sales professional. As a sales professional, your time is far too valuable for this clerical, time intensive activity.
Understand that prospecting is the monotonous activity of separating the prospects (those people with an interest and with money) from suspects. So if you had a list of everyone in Beverly Hills zip code 90210, you can safely assume that most have money. But how do you find the 1% that have interest in your product or service? You let a sales laborer do it.
Here are some examples:
1. You delegate prospecting to an outside firm that will design and print and mail a postcard or letter for you. That firm and the post office mail carriers become your sales laborers to deliver your 10,000 mailers. The 1% of the recipients that reply (100 people) are “prospects” and these are the people you should talk to now that the prospecting has been done.
2. You hire a telemarketer or telemarketing firm to call those 10,000 people with your presentation (could be an invitation to a seminar, offer for a booklet, etc). You only talk to the people who express interest.
3. You place an advertisement in the Beverly Hills edition of the LA Times offering your booklet “The Six Best and Worst IRA Rollover Decisions.” You talk to the 50 people that request your booklet. The LA Times is your sales laborer.
4. You hire a company to run ads for you on the Internet and find prospects that meet your criteria. You pay them per Internet lead.
Yes, these all cost money. If you don’t want to invest in your business, then get a job as an employee because you’re not cut out to be a business owner. You can be a sales laborer for someone else.
Sure, prospecting is the lifeblood of any business but you, the sales professional, shouldn’t be doing it.
To outsource your prospecting, visit Brokerville
