What is prospecting in sales exactly? I used to ask myself the same question when I first began my online journey of learning how to sell.
So I’m sure that’s why you’re here as well right?
So not only am I going to help you understand what it is, but I’m going to share some resources with you throughout this post that will help you gain a better understanding.
Alright, so let’s get straight to it.
First things first, according to Hubspot, sales prospecting is basically a process where you search for potential customers, clients or buyers in hopes of developing or creating new business.
Now, it’s also a big deal that you know that prospecting is just one of the steps throughout a typical sales process. If you’re not sure what I mean, don’t worry. Make sure you check back in because I’ll be covering sales processes pretty soon.
But for now, let’s focus on the importance of prospecting.
The importance of prospecting in sales is not just important, but it can be the make or break factor in your selling efforts. Question for you, have you ever struggled getting sales in your business? Or, are you currently struggling with closing sales in your business?
If you answered yes to any of the questions I just asked above, it’s very likely that you haven’t applied sales prospecting or haven’t done it correctly.
Before selling anyone anything, doesn’t it make sense to know if they’re qualified to buy first?
I mean, what if you’re selling something that costs four thousand dollars, but the person you’re speaking to only has $400 to their name? Probably isn’t an ideal buyer or customer, right?
Understanding what I just shared with you will help you realize prospecting is not difficult, but very necessary if you want to help you and your customer benefit simultaneously.
So now that we know the importance of prospecting, why is prospecting difficult for some salespeople? Truth is, most people when they’re first getting started with their business, just want to focus on making money. Are you guilty of that as well?
I sure was one of those who wanted an immediate return on investment.
So if I had to list out some of the reasons why prospecting can be difficult, I would start with the following 4 reasons.
Lack of Patience
When it comes to prospecting and finding potential customers, it can definitely take time. Not every person you come across is an ideal buyer. Take your time and know the signs of a potential customer who’s ready to purchase your products or services. The only way you can do that, is you must overcome reason number two below.
Lack of Clarity
Ok, so we know we need to prospect and find potential customers. But people tend to get stuck asking, “who is an ideal buyer for my products or services?” In order to understand who’s ready to buy what you’re selling, I recommend you create something called a “customer avatar”. Once you’ve created your customer avatar, you’ll have clarity on exactly who you should be looking for as a potential customer when prospecting.
I recommend you continue to study and get clarity on buyer ready prospects. The more clarity you have, the easier it is to find potential customers.
Lack of Sales Knowledge
What I’ve noticed after people finally get a hand of prospecting, is that they don’t know what to do or say once they are able to find potential buyers. They tend to ask…
– “how do I connect with them?”
OR
– “what do I say to them once I connect with them?”
At the end of the day, this all comes down to sales knowledge. Now I briefly cover this in step #4 in a previous post I created. But ultimately, if you want to get your questions answered directly, reach out to us here. Once you join our support group, we’ll be more than happy to get your answers to you once you ask them.
Lack of Prospecting Tools
If you’re looking to make your prospecting efforts a lot more simple or efficient, it’s important you use the right tools. Two of the tools I tend to suggest people use are Tagboard and Facebook’s Graph Search. These tools are so simple to use to help you find ideal prospects, these are definitely the best places to start.
Now it is awesome to have the proper tools for your prospecting efforts.
But ultimately, the sales prospecting techniques you implement while using the tools is what makes your prospecting abilities ever more effective. Here are some techniques below you can start using.