How many times have you spent too much time with what you thought was a great prospect, only have them wind up being a suspect?
If you can’t tell the difference, there is no way you will ever achieve any level of success in sales.
The sooner you can validate the intentions of the person with whom you are talking, the sooner you’ll be using your time efficiently.
There are two ways you can validate a prospect.
First, ask them to provide you with what I will refer to as proprietary information.
Proprietary information is something you would not be able to find out any other way unless the person with whom you are talking shares it with you.
The information might be personal or related to their business. I like this as a clue for one reason. A person is not going to share with you proprietary information unless they have confidence in you and they feel there is a reason to do so. Put another way, a person who has no intention of buying from you is most likely not going to share with you something that is proprietary in nature.
Second, ask the person if they would do something for you after you leave.
For example, you could ask them if they would review something you send them and then email you their comments. The reason this is a good gage is because someone who is not interested in you at all will definitely NOT take the time to do anything “extra” that you ask.
There are a number of variations to these two techniques you can use, depending on the type of prospect you’re dealing with and your style. No matter how you use this approach, the objective is the same — to validate if the person is a prospect or merely a suspect.
The reason it’s so important to validate this is avoid wasting the most valuable asset you have — your time. Trust me, you do not want to spend a lot of time with people who have no intention of buying.
If you’re serious about increasing the effectiveness of your sales prospecting skills, I will highly recommend you check out my Sales Prospecting Program. Click on this link or the below image to find out more!
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
