Increase your sales through prospecting

Prospecting comes from the word ‘’prospect’’. According to the Oxford Dictionary of current modern English, prospect implies the possibility of something occurringIn sales, prospecting is a term generally used to describe the activity of pursuing potential clients that are likely to buy your product or service.The target when prospecting is therefore searching for and finding clients with the potential and the will to purchase your product or service. It involves finding an opportunity that can legitimately be included in the early stage of the sales pipeline.When prospecting, it is important to note that the target should be turning ‘’suspects’’ into ‘’prospects’’. For a suspect to be considered a prospect with new business opportunities, he must show urgency about a situation the seller can address, define a desire the want to be fulfilled and show interest in what the seller has to offer.Prospecting is equated to setting a goal and lay strategies of how to achieve them. Successful business people always urgue that ‘’if you don’t prospect’’, ‘then you don’t expect’’. Prospecting is a foundation off selling. It is a principal activity by which we fill the sales pipeline or feed the sales funnel.When prospecting for new business opportunities, it vital to sort, prioritise and have hands on approach that is relevant and practical. Those three guiding principles help to set modern standards and at the same time working out local solutions that eventually lead to achievement of your business target.It’s always important to be’’ on top of the game’’. By this, I mean understanding the product or service that you’re going to sell very well. Much as organisations have induction programmes aimed at spelling out features, advantages and benefits of the product or service sold by them, it’s vital that sales professionals move an extra mile and go beyond the descriptions and explain in detail the competitive advantage of the product or service and how to position it.It’s good to always concentrate on the distinguishing factors that give the prospect or potential client compelling reasons to buy. This should mainly be centred on explaining the value the product or service is going to add to his needs and desires. It is also important to take a positive view of the product or service and look for the opportunity not a problem.When prospecting, it is important to carry out thorough research. There is more to just writing down a list of companies or individuals who seem to be potential clients in a given area. Its better that you dig deeper and analyse what problems your product has solved to the existing clients and then look for clients experiencing a similar problem. Let’s take the example of a pharmaceutical company that aims to launch a new drug in a given area. It’s important that the salesmen take along with them the testimonies of the people who have used that drug before in order to fully convince the prospective clients the beauty about that product and hence compel them to buy it.It is also important to analyse the implications of not addressing the need or identified problem. You should be able to show the implication on revenue, margins, costs, market share etc in monetary terms. Contextualising the problem to the target audience is building a strong foundation for good prospecting. The message should be crafted in a way that it yields a great response rate from the target rich pool. The message should be a buyer focused, implication-derived message. Let’s take the example where a politician campaigns for a given leadership position. He makes sure that his campaign team passes on a message that is appealing to the public based on the issues and challenges on the ground in that given area. Barack Obama’s slogan ‘’change’’ in this case was appealing to most Americans because it looked at the problems created by the previous regime and proposed practical solutions and owing to that, he was voted into office.Because a salesperson is assigned a territory within which to prospect for business, it is important that he plans his territory so that he focuses his energy and resources to that particular zone by determining the market potential in line with the prospecting plan.It is also useful to segment the market by sectors. For instance, NGOs, government agencies etc. develop a plan that ensures that all areas of your territory are covered.When choosing a prospect well, there are facts that a salesman should have on to his finger tips.One of those facts is knowing his competitors. He should be in a position to know his competitor. Does the competitor have stronger financial muscle? Are his products cheaper or more expensive? Are they accessible and of better quality? The rationale towards knowing these facts is to facilitate the prospective organisation to identify a niche. For example, Chinese companies, after identifying that the African market is dominated by low income earners, resorted to producing cheaper goods that are affordable to the masses hence consolidating their businesses.