Tips for Successful Prospecting
- Motivate yourself! Review your personal goals. How much personal income do you want, how many sales prospecting calls will be required to attain that goal, how much will each sales prospecting call make you?
- Expand your contacts. Develop or acquire an effective list of contacts in your target markets. Remember, sales prospecting calls can also be used to gain additional business within current client accounts and their various locations and divisions.
- Prepare for your initial prospecting call. Have you done research on the prospect prior to the call? If so, prepare an effective call opening. As you may already know from our telephone selling workshop, calling to follow up on information sent or to speak directly with a high-level decision maker are approaches that have the lowest hit rates! Remember, common prospecting approaches are often dead giveaways that you’re a salesperson, thus lowering the likelihood of success.
- Qualify quickly. We regularly observe salespeople making multiple call attempts only to find, out after they have a conversation with a prospect, that the firm isn’t qualified. This is a huge time waster! Our field tests of several unpublished prospecting techniques indicate that a prospect can be qualified on the first call 60% – 80% of the time.
- Prepare responses to common objections. Everyone gets objections on prospecting calls like, “you caught me at a bad time” or “can you send me information?” Since we all know what objections we are likely to get, why not prepare a list of the most effective responses? Remember, mishandling objections is the quickest way to lose sales opportunities.
- Have a “Power Hour” each day. Set up a specific time for sales prospecting where you are focused only on making outbound calls. Be sure to hold all incoming calls (or have others handle them) and other activities that detract from your focused prospecting.
- Track your statistics. Keeping track of qualified prospects you obtain on the first call, call openings used vs. appointments and your close rates for each category of prospects are key data points that help identify opportunities for improvement. If you only reach 10% of the decision makers you call, how can you improve that ratio? If only 20% of decision makers grant you an appointment, how can you obtain more appointments?
To become a sales prospecting guru, consider taking our Phone Skills Training course. And best wishes for success!
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You Get What You Negotiate
It has been said, “if you don’t ask for it, you’ll never get it.” Indeed, one hallmark of a sales pro is business and sales negotiations prowess. And effective sales negotiations are dependent on skills, beliefs and attitudes. To boost your personal success, put into action the following sales negotiations tips:
Sales Negotiations Tips
- ASSESS NEEDS THOROUGHLY: The best way to negotiate sales is to completely understand what your client or prospect is seeking and why. The more needs and issues you can identify, the more ways you have to structure an arrangement that works for both sides.
- QUANTIFY BENEFITS: Understanding the financial and intangible benefits that the client will likely realize after purchasing your product or service helps deflect price and value objections during the negotiation stage of the sale and helps reduce the need to discount.
- MAINTAIN CONTROL: The one most in control has the ability to negotiate the best deal. Examples of maintaining control include: setting meeting agendas, initiating a negotiation call (when the other side may not have the luxury of as much time as you) and setting other types of limits.
- BEWARE OF DIVULGING TOO MUCH: Letting the other party know more than they need to can give them the upper hand. Examples include: that you need one more sale this month to make quota, that your product pricing is expected to be reduced in the future and that you have granted more favorable terms to other clients.
- HAVE A WALKAWAY: Pre-determine the point at which the deal makes no sense (e.g. anything below a certain price level, any terms beyond net 90) and walk away from the sale when that point is reached. Knowing in advance when to walk away can both help you avoid unprofitable sales and spur the client into agreeing to the minimum terms you need.
- CREATE A BACK UP PLAN: Should the negotiation fail, have a back up plan (e.g. an alternate product to propose or a trial program). Many failing business deals have been revived due to well-conceived back up plans.
- FOCUS ON A WIN-WIN: Since most salespeople are looking to enhance relationships to solidify future business, it is imperative that clients see value and fairness during the sales negotiations.
Without a doubt, learning how others successfully conduct sales negotiations is key to improving your sales results and personal earnings. Remember, “You get what you negotiate!”
All Rights Reserved. The Sales Alliance Inc. San Diego, CA
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