Sales Prospecting Overview

Sales Prospecting Training

The goal of this sales prospecting training course is to arm you with the skills for attaining significant sales growth by proactively calling your customers and prospects. The savvy salesperson who regularly and systematically makes outbound or proactive calls gets to stack qualified sales leads one on top of the other, with customer after customer. In sales, the single most effective tool we have is the telephone. It is also our most underutilized and avoided tool. We are far more comfortable with much less effective communications like social media and email.

So, sales prospecting calls get you the customer yeses and commitments quicker. They also get you to the rejections in a hurry—which is a good thing, because we have to call through a lot of them to get to the wins. Prospecting and proactive calls supercharge relationships, especially when compared with the generally silent competition. Prospecting calls tell existing customers you are interested. Proactive calls give you airtime in front of prospects.

We may be in the digital era; however, in sales, the single most effective tool we have is the telephone. It is also our most underutilized and avoided tool. We are far more comfortable with much less effective communications like social media and email. Yet, phone calls get you the buyer’s yeses way quicker. They also get you to the rejections in a hurry—which is a good thing, because we must walk through a lot of them to get to the wins. With the return to work, most people are now in the office 3 or more days per week. All the people who can buy from us have a phone within reach, be it a landline or a cell phone.

Sales Prospecting Feeds Your Pipeline

Proactive calls feed your pipeline and business growth. They flood your pipeline with new opportunities and advance existing ones.

·         They uncover new leads and opportunities.

·         Turn leads into prospects

·         They move prospects toward a proposal or quote.

·         They move quotes and proposals toward a close.

·         They close new business.

·         They expand your business with existing customers.

·         They build relationships in less time.

·         They make you stand out.

·         They make it clear that you care about your customers and prospects.

Increase your sales prospecting effectiveness:

·         Follow a consistent schedule.

·         Focus, focus, and focus on your plan’s execution.

·         Implement different techniques to see where you’re getting the most impact.

·         Create prospecting scripts and test different versions to see what’s most impactful.

·         Always be actively listening to ensure your responses are on target with the conversation.

·         Be a provider of great solutions by acknowledging the challenges and needs of your clients.

·         Practice warm calling by connecting online before making the cold call offline.

·         Establish yourself as a thought leader by having articles and stories.

·         Know that prospecting is not selling; it’s an opportunity to interact with leads.

·         Ensure they’re qualified and initiate their journey through your sales funnel.

Formulating Prospect Definitions

For sales prospecting to be successful, prospective customers must have the willingness, the financial capacity, and the authority to buy, and they must be available to you. You can waste a lot of selling time if you attempt to sell to individuals who have neither need for the product nor money to pay for it. You can also waste time if you try to sell to the wrong titles or contacts; so, it is important to ascertain which persons in each target account have the authority to buy.

Overcome The Fear of Change

Humans don’t like change. We actively work to avoid it. We stick to our routines and favorites. We live by the axiom, “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” The “sudden death” experience of making a decision can hold the buyer to their current status quo (maybe I’m OK), so they shut you down. They avoid conflict, hesitate in the face of change, abhor the unknown, and are averse to risk.

Buyers bring this emotional baggage into the buying process, and because humans remember negative events far more vividly than positive ones, stakeholders believe that past negative events will be more likely to happen in the future. When the safety bias is hitched to the status-quo bias, it creates a formidable emotional wall and breeds objections. The number one reason why buyers choose not to move forward with you is not price, product specs, delivery windows, or any of the things salespeople too often blame. It’s the fear of negative future consequences.

Buying is a change management project, so it can get personal and emotional.