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Prospecting for Customers and Opportunities

Written by: Phil Shipperlee

Article Overview: The prospecting process focuses into individual suspects; starting to engage with specific companies and within them named individuals. It 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.

Prospecting for Customers and Opportunities

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.

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Related Forum Posts
Prime Means of Selling - Prospecting and Selling aren't the same. Prospecting is finding the few within a target group who are prime candidates for your service. I don't think everyone will agree on what "prime" means but I'd say if the prospects actively want what you're offering and have the ability to pay for what you're offering then they qualify as "prime".
Re: Two Useful Books To Help You Focus On The CLIENT - Hi David, To add to your thread, I'd like to recommend Jonathan Tisch's "Chocolates On The Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience". Tisch's book includes content on "Welcoming Customers", "The New Art of Customization", "The Challenges of Customer Diversity" and "Offering Something Extra to Your Customers" to name a few.
How to Do Great Marketing with (Amost) No Money - I've given this presentation to CEOs many times. Now i can share it with you. But I cannot because I do not yet have 20 posts. Jeff Ogden, President Find New Customers
Re: Work At Home EStore (13775) - Maybe we need a folder where people who want to post this type of stuff can post it, rather than scattered throughout the forums... Something like Opportunities for Entrepreneurs... or something?
Re: Are Business Owners too Old School to be Sold by a blog - [quote:140e27hj]Customers Pick Static Documents over Blog Entries 8 to 1 on Average[/quote:140e27hj] Interesting study. Just as a commenter said on your post... don't call it a blog. I agree.


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