Where are you getting your prospecting sales leads? And are you concerned about quantity or quality?
Too many salespeople seem to believe in simply getting as many leads as possible. This might be true if you sell a low-cost, frequently-purchased good or service. The reality is most salespeople do not sell in this arena.
I will then contend the focus needs to be on the quality of the prospecting sales leads, rather than on the quantity.
The challenge is in knowing what is a quality prospecting sales lead.
Your objective involves two things.
First, create enough awareness with the prospect so they know who you are and how you can assist them.
Second, know a critical piece of information about them. This is what separates the good sales prospector from the average or poor prospector.
I will take a few good leads any day, and I’m sure you would too, but here’s the rub — we don’t know who’s good until we start working with them. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of working with hundreds of companies and thousands of salespeople.
Let me share with you what I believe is the secret sauce in finding quality prospecting sales leads.
First step is to deliver a frequency of messages using email, telephone and even regular mail. It takes a minimum of 6 messages delivered over a 30- to 45-day period to begin breaking through. Key is to follow-through and do it with each message carrying a separate key benefit of value to the customer.
These messages are not about you. They must be relevant to the prospect.
Second step happens once you make live contact with the prospect. You need to try to get them to share with you a piece of critical information about them or their business. This is key. Until a prospect shares with you something of confidence, then you can’t view them as a genuine prospect. They’re only a suspect.
In both steps, you need to be targeted with your messages. Deliver them with frequency and gain inside information about them. It’s not as hard as you might think.
I’m going to ask you to continue reading these blog postings in the days and weeks to come because, I’m focusing nearly 100% of my blogging effort on this subject of prospecting.
My goal is one thing — to help you be more effective in developing your sales prospecting leads.
Copyright 2012, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
3 Responses
Mark, I confess – I usually fall into the Quantity bucket myself. There is something about digging into a pile of leads to work through that gets the selling juices flowing. The mindset of “they must have an interest or why would they have been captured as a lead in the first place” is in the back of my mind.
I guess when it comes down to it, I want both Quality and Quantity! Is that too much to ask?
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you ever been running a blog for? you made blogging look easy. The entire glance of your website is excellent, let alone the content!