Grow Your Prospects & Grow Sales!

To keep your prospect pipeline growing, make time each day to contact at least 20 NEW prospects. When a manager receives sales reports from sales reps showing calls to the same companies over and over, it´s obvious they´re losing ground with prospects (and sales $$$$). In order to keep your prospect list growing, make a list of 20 accounts to call on each day (NEW accounts). Then schedule at least one hour to make phone calls to this list and set appointments. You should see at least ten to fifteen NEW prospects each week if you expect to sell at least five of them.

The decision-maker

To get to the `real` decision-maker, qualify right up front when you`re initiating the sales call. With innocent questions, you can determine if you`re talking to the right person. As you enter your sales process, the best questions to ask that will help direct you to the `real` decision-maker is: "How will this decision be made?" "Who will be involved?" If there are more than one involved, include them all in your process.

The ABC´s of Prospecting

Make a list of your prospects by category.
A-B-C

A = a hot prospect that will do business real soon.

B = a prospect that will need my product or service, but is not ready yet.

C = a prospect that I need to continually develop.

Work all A,B,C prospects with the objective of moving them to your ‘CUSTOMER' list.

Plant a Prospect Tree

Plant a Prospect Tree and cultivate your prospects. The first thing you must do is plant the seed, followed by much tender care of watering and fertilizing and feeding that Prospect Tree until it begins to grow. As your Prospect Tree begins to grow, imagine each prospect as a piece of fruit beginning to develop on the branches. You will finally notice that several of the pieces of fruit are ripe and ready to pick. (These are the prospects that are ready to buy) Each week, keep cultivating your Prospect Tree and you`ll find that the `fruits` will begin to ripen - a few at a time...and you`ll never go hungry again.
:-)

Qualified Buyer ?

You may have heard the story about a car salesman who was approached by a grungy man who appeared to looking at new ‘expensive' cars on the showroom floor. This man was dressed slouchy, clothes with grease and dirt and mud all over them, dirty fingernails, sweat running down his forehead, and so forth. The first car salesman gave him a fleeting glance and went about his own business. A different salesman approached the man and began asking questions. What he learned was that the man looking at cars was a gazillionaire who had just given up on his broken down Mercedes down the highway about two miles and walked to the dealer ready to write a check for a new car!
This is a classic example of pre-judging a prospect.
Never pre-judge by appearance of the person, the décor of the office, or the car that the owner of the company drives. It just might turn out to be your biggest sale of the year!

Cold Calls

From the beginning of selling times, we´ve all been told to go get some new prospects. Cold Calls...yuk!!
Who likes them? Your boss. Who hates them? YOU and YOUR PROSPECTS. People don´t like to be sold, but they love to buy. The key to making NEW CALLS (vs. Cold Calls) is to approach a prospect as a friend might approach them. Create interest in YOU, Your Company, and your Product or service. Get to know your prospects as ´people´ and they will buy from YOU.

Ebay Selling Strategies

Write it and sell it as an ebook first. There are many sites that will carry you if the material is good. Ebookads.com or radarblipbooks.com for example. Radar blip has a better chance at selling since they are new and they will sell your book on Ebay also. Also start a blog site on

blogger.com for example. It gets lots of exposure. After you have a finished product that is marketable there are numerous self publishing sites that give you advice on how to distribute. Selfpublsihingnews.com is one in particular.

Finding New Prospects

Sales professionals are always looking for their next ´best´ prospect. Regardless of what you are selling, you can find prospects ´everywhere´; however, the best places to start would be in trade magazines, newspapers, even your local telephone directories. As an example, let´s say you sell advertising. The best prospects are those that ´advertise´ in media that are similar to your own. Perusing these competitive media will give you new ideas and new prospects. Note: You will also learn more about your competition this way.

Two kinds of buyers

A prospect who is ready to buy your product or service is in one of two categories.
1. He´s ready to buy and just doesn´t know who to buy from.
2. He´s ready to buy and he knows who he wants to buy from.

Geographic Territory

When you`re assigned a geographic territory, break it up a little bit. You can work it by street, zip code, or any other way that allows you to see the most people in the least amount of time. Territory Management is a key to the sales `numbers` game. The more prospects you can contact each day - the more sales you`ll end up with. Develop a system to help you see more people, in less time.

Find those Prospects

With the Internet at your fingertips, you´ll be able to prospect online. One of the best sites for locating information on corporations is at Hoovers.com

Where to find prospects! ?

Sales professionals are always looking for their next `best` prospect. Regardless of what you are selling, you can find prospects `everywhere`; however, the best places to start would be in trade magazines, newspapers, even your local telephone directories. As an example, let`s say you sell advertising. The best prospects are those that `advertise` in media that are similar to your own. Perusing these competitive media will give you new ideas and new prospects. Note: You will also learn more about your competition this way.

Dig deep into your market

We've all heard the word ‘markets' and the word has a number of meanings. The first thing you need to do is determine your market before you even know who to call. Begin with the four basic markets and then dig deeper into the one that you want to penetrate. The four basic markets are: Consumers, Service industries, Industrial, Non-commercial

Get your ACT! together-

The best way to keep your prospect and customer base up to date is by using some type of Contact Management system. In the old days, sales pros used the 3x5 card system. Today, the most successful sales professionals use a computer software program. One of the most popular contact management software programs out today is: ACT!

Spruce it up

With technology advances, we now have a presentation tool that's so easy to use: PowerPoint presentations. Some of the dullest presentations I've seen in a long time have been PowerPoint presentations. While they are easy to use, most people will simply add bullets and written tid-bits of information. For a PowerPoint to really be effective, add some color, graphics, sound, and motion if showing on screen. My PowerPoints tend to always be a bit different than the norm, as I prefer portrait style layout rather than landscape (which is used the majority of time). Portrait style allows me to print a page and insert it into a binder to use as a visual in a book-like fashion rather than flip-chart style. By doing this you can customize your binder with additional print products (testimonial letters, brochure pages, etc.)