New Age Prospecting

“Sales Cooke: Once I get in front of my prospects and customers, I am very good at the relationship building and qualifying components of your sales program.  My biggest challenge is actually getting meetings with my best decision makers.  How do I do that?”  — Ellen C., St. Louis, MO

Today’s economic climate has put many in an unfriendly selling environment.  With fewer people buying, it seems there are more people selling.  As such, traditional prospecting tools such as cold calling and networking events are not producing the results they use to.   The simple reason, too many people pushing their wants and needs to sell something to disinterested, non-prospective buyers.

The strategy for prospecting in this environment is very similar to what I encourage people looking for a job to do: utilize your resources to build connections with the right people.  There are planning steps that will help you here:

• Know who your best connections or decision makers are.  In every sales relationship there is always one person that is your best resource for getting connected with a potential customer, i.e. engineer, CFO, head of operations, marketing director, etc.
• Know the companies, by name, that are on your ideal target list. The companies on your target list are companies you desire to do business with because they can best benefit from utilizing your products and services.  And these companies that you have a high likelihood of converting to customers once you connect in.
• Know why these target companies fit your selling demographic. It is one thing to create a bunch of targets.  It is another proposition to have a sound strategic reason for wanting to sell to them.  Pick companies for which you can articulate why you want to sell to them and why you believe you have a reasonable chance of making a sale.

What you have created is a well defined, specific list to provide  your trusted resources.  Armed with the specifics of a contact title and company name your contacts are equipped with effective and specific referral information.  These two simple pieces of information makes your referral partners role much easier by providing them with very specific targets, as opposed to a broad, generic description mose referral partners are given.  Want prospects?  Know “who” you want to talk with, at “what” companies, and “how” this fits your sales objectives.  It is that simple.