Prospecting for Customers and Opportunities is the second of the four major elements of the complete go-to-market model.
In previous articles we looked at your Market Focus. It’s now time to focus into individual suspects; start to engage with specific companies and within them named individuals. This is often seen as the interface point between marketing activities and selling activities.
The prospecting process establishes the foundation for later stages of the selling cycle, identifying at an early stage where you might be wasting your time, and hence will dramatically increase your chance of success. The whole point of the prospecting process is to provide a controlled process which leaves you in no doubt that you have customers who want to buy from you. The certainty that this provides enables you to run your business with the benefit of leading indicators about future revenue, margin and profit.
Prospecting is the processes and activities required to move an organisation through the stages of suspect, prospect, customer and eventually buyer or user. The two main roles of the prospecting process are; turning “suspects” into “customers” via the interim stage of “prospect”, and to begin the business development cycle of identifying or creating and then pursuing opportunities for specific pieces of business.
* Suspects are those organisations that appear, on the surface, to have the characteristics to become customers for your company and your proposition.
* Prospects are those suspects who, following some specific investigation, continue to display the characteristics of potential customers.
* Customer is an organisation who explicitly states that they accept you as a supplier, they want or need what you do, and they are willing to buy it from you. It is a common mistake to assume that because someone has bought something from you, they are now a customer. It may only be that it suited them to use you at that time, which does not mean that they will use you again or that they see you in any particular light that differentiates you from the competition.
Prospecting may be done for you by your channel partners, who were themselves identified through a process of prospecting. The nature of your agreements with your channel partners may, however still include your active involvement in the prospecting activity.
The primary mechanism for prospecting is telemarketing, supported by other marketing activities such as (e )mail-shots, opinion pieces, or active involvement in trade associations & exhibitions. However, the main activity will involve researching the list of suspects within your market focus through the web and other means before making outbound selling calls to those companies.
Market “intelligence”, acquired through research, enables you to focus into those suspects who more closely match your desired characteristics, and then to ensure you understand the problems and issues being suffered by your suspect.
Your proposition can then be tailored, to illustrate the value to be gained by buying from you; “we have a solution to ….” rather than, “these are the features of what we do, do you want to buy some?”. This will help to ensure the suspect or prospect remembers you, and for the right reasons.
You need to ensure that the combination of research and well planned extended structured questions generates sufficient well-qualified prospects to produce the number of new customers required to achieve your business plan. Taking the calling activity further will enable you to take those prospects, develop them into customers, and then to identify specific opportunities for your proposition.
Tips:
* Research the suspect and build the messages around their specific issues and problems, always seeking to demonstrate value to them. The messages for a head of finance will be different to those used for HR, or production.
* By reducing the number of suspects to the smallest possible, before expending expensive selling effort, all remaining activities will be more focused and therefore more effective and efficient. This will help to give you a higher rate of return on your selling effort and a more predictable outcome. This will also help you to build some leading indicators which will enable you to spot weak points in the sales pipeline in time to do something about it.
* Well planned, managed and executed networking can be a valuable source of prospecting opportunities. It may be that the networking encounter is mainly about getting enough information to empower the later telephone call, but nonetheless, an important tool for the early stages of the selling process.
Copyright © Performative plc 2001-2006. All rights reserved.
Prospecting for Customers and Opportunities - To learn more about this author, visit Phil Shipperlee's Website.
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Phil Shipperlee
(Visit Phil's Website)
Phil Shipperlee, CEO and Founder of
Performative, started in sales with
Olivetti in 1969 and progressed to senior
roles in Sales & Marketing in the Software
& IT Services sector; UK country manager,
head of global sales & marketing based in
the USA, head of European operations (UK,
France, Benelux, Germany and Italy). Phil
was instrumental in creating a selling
process integrating 12 acquisitions and
used throughout operations in North
America, UK, Europe, Australia, Japan and
India. Since 1980 he has built and run
several successful businesses.
Performative provide business performance
improvement solutions to companies across
the UK. There is an indisputable link
between the overall performance of the
whole business and the performance of the
sales operation, hence, our core focus
commences in the sales operation but also
looks upward to the Board and its
strategy, and outward at the integration
of the selling operation with the rest of
the organisation.
Special areas of knowledge: the creation
of high performance selling operations
within any corporate environment, solving
the business issues of SMEs, using and
selling offshore solutions, M&A,
post-acquisition integration.
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