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
Tags: client prospecting
You left out a Internet Marketing company to drive in leads via your website, but over all it is good useful information.
There are some great points in this article. Growing a financial advisory practice is a full time business where the advisor should be delegating prospecting and dedicating all of their time to meeting with prospects and clients.
Thanks for sharing this
Your example of placing ads is perfect. I’ve done this before and have had great success.
I’d agree with Jenna, having an internet marketing stratergy is key in this day and age with so much revenue made online. apart from that, a great post.
I agree, prospecting saves you more time and yield effective results. Time spent on doing things your own selective ways can be used differently.
So true! Outsourcing is a very good way to optimize your output!
That is really cool idea. If you send mail to each of your 10,000 recipients the ones who reply back to you are the real prospects
I just started outsourcing and I can say that while output is increased, quality has decreased. That being said, it is easier to make changes to poor work than create something from scratch, so cost has definitely been lowered.
I always used PPC and other methods to find leads. It not so bad.
The best tip I guess is to hire someone that you can trust and that you really can depend on in terms of completing a task.
Using this method, by the time you get to your prospects, they are highly interested and targeted. Then you have to establish the trust, as others have said above.
I just started outsourcing and I can say that while output is increased, quality has decreased
Prospecting is the art of opening new relationships.We are focused on the outcome that is better described as opening new business relationships to identify potential new business opportunities.
what the product, a salesperson must continue to look for people to sell to. While there are many methods, nothing is quite as effective as working with a satisfied customer. It is a matter of it being worth their while.
”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” wow..well and truly said. your idea about prospecting is absolutely correct. nice post
Absolutely true! Very good ideas. This are good tips to make prospecting, but I think there are another ways to show my self.
Good post, very straight to the point no messing around I like it!
And the good thing about having a telemarketer or telemarketing firm call those possible clients leaves you to find the next project. I have been involved at both ends and now I am able to use this to match the right recruits to the right accounts within call centers jobs telemarketer and telemarketing customer service and so on
building trust is very important, especially when building an organization. to keep moving forward and growing challenges.
article that helped me
I have to agree with you about the idea on getting a day job if you don’t have the heart to invest or to run a business. Business-minded people invest time and money on the niche which they surely wanted to succeed. As most businessmen say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
May be cold calling can be one of the ways of client prospecting.Direct sales calls have given cold calling a bad reputation. The first thing that usually comes to mind is a call dinner at time to hawk anything from magazine subscriptions to mortgage refinancing offers. However, the purpose of a cold call is not to make a sale. It’s to engage in a brief conversation that informs the prospective client of how the product or service can benefit their business. The ultimate goal is to schedule a face-to-face meeting to pitch the sale.
Right on! Outsourcing is the key to up-scaling…the key to freeing you from laborious tasks. Spending money on your business is critical. Really, it comes down to how efficiently and effectively one wants to run their business.
”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.”
Some have it and some don’t. Fact.
these were some lovely tips you have provided for a sales professional. Most of the people depend their business on prospective customers and rely on them to get attracted towards their product in some way. By following your strategy, I am sure companies will be able to cater much more audience than they were getting before.
We hired a representative after a long while of doing this our selves, and it has worked out great for us.
This is so true. I try to focus on natural lead generation for our new sales, and we too have outsourced prospecting.
I agree 100%. Outsourcing is the key to productivity and efficiency, which are the fundamental goals of any business or individual in a free market capitalist economy.
Outsourcing is the best way to do things like this however you haveto put into perspective the costs. If you can afford to do it then its a huge andvantage to your business.
very important point you’ve got there. there is no point in doing such a time consuming work that is not worth your time.
i can find a dozen better things to do with my time than prospecting my clients.
anyway, awsome post. thanks!
Thanks for sharing such an informative post
I totally agree that without investing in our own business you cant get success.
Investing means finding skilled person and using technology to the optimum level.
To convert a prospectus into client is a hard job and it is explained in the above post how to make it easy
I agree that you should spend your time perfecting your craft, and leave prospecting to others.
You do need to choose what is important. I like to outsource some things and do some prospecting myself.
We have tried telemarketing many times to gather prospects, but people are too busy to listen how we can help them. We believe that internet marketing via social media is the best way to identify prospects. Social media affords the opportunity for friends to make your services go viral by passing an interesting article to their friends, who in turn pass it on to their friends.
I didn’t know that prospecting and sales is different! So this is a good point to learn. The thing is that if you are a one person company (freelancer) you must do the prospecting, sales, marketing, job, customer care and everything in between. It’s pain.. Hope I can start a business soon with money to invest.
I agree with this you should outsource your marketing needs to proven professionals and this will allow to focus on your strengths. Grant
Only average salespeople do some customer prospecting and then stop to take care of a new customer. Great ones constantly prospect to keep appointments and sales flowing.
Yes these are two different roles within the organization and should be treated as such, one is an opener and one is closer and it may be that these skills are not in the skills of the opener and then consider the fact that if you are the one who in fact does close the deal as well as commission there is the knowledge that you are aware of what may have been promised in order to obtain the account/sale , i completely agree to keep the two as separate roles.
Javellian marketing say that you should never prospect for clients and in my view the honorable javelian market is saying absolutely right.
You mention how all the options provided cost money. This is probably one of the biggest blocks we are facing, and I suspect many others as well.
Can’t make money without spending money!! But sometimes you ahve no choice but to prospect and do live calls all at once.
I agree that we must have someone else to do the prospecting for us, there are lot of things that needs our attention when we want our business to be successful and that is not prospecting clients.
I agree with Jenna, having an internet marketing strategy is key in this day and age with so much revenue made online
You have raised a valid point ,many people try to get business by being sales oriented which is wrong .You need to be marketing oriented first to get the sales.Create a sales environment though your marketing campaigns and sales will follow accordingly instead of wasting time in qualifying people as a customer.You need to manage your time and plan accordingly.
Prospecting is anathema to most creative professionals and downright frightening for many. Prospecting may eventually lead to a sale, but before you can even get there you have to build a relationship, and prospecting is the first step in doing so. No one likes prospecting, but sometimes it’s the only way to find that nugget of gold.
good points, outsourcing and trust are two important things..
Prospecting customers really says a big amount of capital..and if a company keep on doing so, then it has to gamble a big cash.. for that kind of marketing strategy..
Alexis
Sometimes prospecting clients work. it depends on the nature of the business.
Business is about creating relationships. Prospecting makes people feel commoditized….
Yeah, nice but how can you outsource the menial task of prospecting when you’re basically a very small enterprise?
Prospects, like food in your refrigerator, are perishable and therefore need to be contacted quickly. Each day you let slip by without making initial contact with your referral dramatically reduces the probability of you making the sale. Develop the habit of contacting your referrals within two-business days or sooner. Have a system to keep track of your referrals so they don’t end up falling through the cracks. It’s critical to have a computerized client contact management system to record your remarks and track future contacts and appointments. Relying on your memory alone is a very poor business decision that will cost you dearly.
The message is clear. Outsource all the clercial work in marketing areas to concentrate on your core business. Though certain cost is involved, it will certainly improve the profit of the business
Hello friend, thanks for sharing such a useful information. I agree with your views & appreciate it. Few of the points which I consider are -
1. Expect the sale.
2. Referrals from existing customers.
3. Make use of events like business fairs which keep your company name at the forefront of people’s minds.