Developing good Prospecting Skills will enable you to find potential buyers of the product or service you are selling.
You may work in a sales job where the customer comes to you and you may not have to find leads or you may have a job where your company provides all the leads.
Even if you work in an environment, like a car dealership where prospects walk into the lot or showroom, there can be a huge opportunity for the salesperson that can generate qualified leads over and above the walk-in traffic.
However, most people in sales will need to prospect for potential clients.
You may fall into one of the following categories.
- Your Company provides leads but you are expected to get more,
- You manage an account list and are required to develop New Business,
- You are responsible to find all your own leads.
Finding people interested in buying your product and/or service can be easy if you follow a basic system and use the resources we talked about in the Preparation Skills section.
You have a Customer Profile, so use it! It has clues to help determine where you can find information about potential buyers of your goods and/or services.
The Features and Benefits of the product and/or service you’re selling, will also help you identify how and where to find prospects.
The better you are at prospecting, the more gold you’ll find.
Lead Generation Techniques
The act of Prospecting for clients is commonly referred to as Lead Generation. Most good companies will control where and how salespeople approach potential clients. It’s a matter of marketing. Your Prospecting Skills will enable you to find leads for any situation making you more marketable.
An effective sales organization will make sure that sales effort is not duplicated. Duplication can be a huge problem when there are many salespeople.
Telesales Operations are especially difficult to control in this regard and management will tightly control existing accounts, geographic markets, and individual lead generation.
Any approach to Lead Generation will usually have to be vetted by a sales manager to make sure that the market is being sold-to in an efficient and effective manner.
The ideas expressed here can be adapted to suit your specific circumstance. I am going to assume that you have control over this area of your business, and even if you don’t, Lead Generation must be one of the selling skills you have in your bag of tricks.
So where do you find leads? Here are a few ideas to get you thinking.
- Existing Customers
- Prospects Themselves
- The Internet
One of the most under-utilized methods of Lead Generation is tapping your existing client base. Any good salesperson will tell you they get a lot of business from referrals.
However, the majority of salespeople never even ask a client if they know of someone that would like the product or service they get from you.
As a matter of fact, many salespeople get business from referrals they didn’t ever ask for themselves. What does that tell you? Ask every client for a referral.
Every time you talk to a prospect, whether you pitch them or not, the last thing out of your mouth should be a request for a referral.
Even if you have been turned down by a person, nine times out of ten, they will be only too happy to give you the name of someone they think might buy from you! It’s a way for them to at least give you something.
I am too old to have had the luxury of the internet for my whole sales career but that hasn’t stopped me from using it for Lead Generation.
You can basically find anything online and by learning how to use the Internet effectively, your prospecting will be raised to a level you never imagined.
I will be adding much more depth in this section of TeleSales-Pro.com. Come back often and check out the additional content so you can keep building your Prospecting Skills.
Jim
Telesales-pro.com is primarily concerned with B2B Telesales. Selling over the Phone to business is a highly specialized activity and depends on many Sales Techniques specific to Telesales.
Whether you are looking for Sales Jobs or Sales Leads, TeleSales-Pro exists to provide you with valuable Sales Tips and Resources.
If you are trying to build your Sales Skills, improving your Telephone Sales Skills will give you a great foundation in Sales. After all, as salespeople, we all want to be Selling more.
Learning to Sell over the Phone will help you understand the Sales Process and will enable you to improve your overall Sales Negotiation Skills.
If you have any comments, feel free to comment about anything you read on telesales-pro.com. If you want to contact me you can email me: jim@telesales-pro.com
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