Hopefully everyone had a fantastic holiday weekend and enjoyed the beautiful weather! We’re back this week to continue our series on why salespeople fail at prospecting. This week we will discuss the importance of keeping the funnel of prospects full and buzzing with activity and how the lack of prospecting awareness can have you looking in the wrong direction for business. Just as a note I will be on a vacation next week and we will not have a sales tip or blog, don’t fret though, I will return and be back to normal the week of June 11. Take care!
-Mike
Reasons why salespeople fail at prospecting
Failure to keep the funnel full
Many sales professionals will tell you that the biggest challenge they are faced with is creating and sustaining the right kind of activity and behavior to consistently keep their prospecting funnel full. The only two elements that you can manage in your respective selling processes are the day-to-day activity and the behavior. If you build the right strategic activity plan, the positive results will take care of themselves. Always remember good behavior gets good results, bad behavior gets bad results. One of the best ways to continuously generate business is to consistently keep the funnel full!
Lack of prospecting awareness
Prospecting is the life-blood of professional selling. Developing a prospecting awareness is all about keeping your antenna up, being focused, tuned in, and recognizing when a prospecting opportunity presents itself. Asking the right questions will uncover the potential for additional business with existing clients. Ask yourself, what does a good prospect look like? What are their characteristics or type of business? Keep these in mind throughout the entire prospecting scenario. Make sure as well with prospecting that you are talking to the decision makers and those in charge of making the big decisions.
- Preplanning
- Concept/Script
- 15 second value positioning statement
- Specific goals and objectives
- Tracking system
- Keep thinking outside the box
- Debrief your calls
Don’t be hesitant to tell people what you are looking for; they can’t help you until they understand your needs. When prospecting one must remember to keep the hunter/farmer mentality; this means that when looking for new prospects one is “on the hunt” for new business, however one must also keep the farmer mentality by nurturing and caring for business relationships that have already been created. Through this two step process you will be able to balance your new prospects while not neglecting your previous.
Remember: We won’t have a blog or sales tip next week but on the week of June 11 we will give answers to insufficient tracking system and poor prospecting attitudes.
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