Do You Have TOO Many Prospects in Your Pipeline?

I am looking closer at the Top 10 Reasons Why Most Prospecting Programs Don’t Work and What You Can Do About It.

#1 was using the same prospecting process for all your prospects.

Today we come to #2: Having TOO many prospects in your pipeline.

This tip rubs a lot of people the wrong way, especially managers, but I’m a firm believer in it. I will have more success if I have fewer prospects whom I can really focus on rather than a bunch of names I don’t have time to deal with.

To get to this point it means you must have a prospecting process that allows you to qualify quickly whether or not the prospect is really a prospect or if they’re nothing but a suspect.

Way too much time is spent by salespeople chasing suspects. Many times the suspects are nice people — they will engage you, the salesperson, so you think they must be a potential customer. You should never forget the first objective of prospecting is to qualify the prospect.

The most valuable asset you have is your time. It’s not what you sell or the service you provide; it’s your time. If you waste 25% of your prospecting time with suspects, then you’ve lost 25% of your prospeting time you could be spending making money.

4 Rules to know if they’re really a prospect and not a suspect:

Have they told you when they are going to make a decision? Nothing worse than spending time with someone who is not going to buy for a couple of years.

Are you sure you’re dealing with the decision maker? Nothing will waste more time than having to sell it twice, because the first time it wasn’t the decision maker.

Have they given you some proprietary information? People aren’t going to share with you proprietary information unless they have confidence in you and are interested in doing business with you.

Do you know what their process is for making a decision? This question encompasses the previous 3 questions, but it challenges you to understand what other issues you could be dealing with.

Your objective is to spend more time with fewer prospects who will in turn give you the highest potential to close a sale.

For all the posts in this series on why most prospecting plans don’t work, check out:

Do You Rely on Email as Your Only Prospecting Tool?
Why You Must Segment Your Prospects
Not Enough Time to Follow Up with Prospects?
Do You Have TOO Many Prospects in Your Pipeline?
Are You Using the Same Prospecting Process for All of Your Prospects?
Do You Think Social Media is Your Answer?
Are You Committing Enough Time?
Your Prospects Really Don’t Care About You
Are Your Messages About the Prospect’s Needs?
The Telephone is Still a Great Prospecting Tool