Prospecting-The Key to Stellar Sales
Just like an athlete who doesn’t stay up to date with his game, sales reps who don’t prospect and use a Customer Relationship Management tool will be unsuccessful in generating new revenue. Prospecting, or the ability to generate and find new business is critical to being successful in sales along with a CRM system. Without them, you are out on an island with no way back. Prospecting should be a painless process, unfortunately the majority of reps procrastinate and wait until there is little in the pipeline before beginning the process. The process has to take place on a daily basis.
There are a number of simple ways that you can prospect for new leads even when time is limited in your day.
- As you drive to your appointments, watch for businesses, trucks, and anything that may be different that may provide you a potential lead. Jot down the name of the company and the relative location. Send a note or place a phone call mentioning that you just had an appointment nearby and wanted to touch base and introduce yourself and products/services. Make sure to include any conversations into your CRM product.
- Get to know mail carriers, real estate agents, and next day service providers who may know of changes in your area and may be able to provide you additional information on business changes that could help your prospecting efforts. By creating strong relationships with people in this industry and creating activities in your CRM product, they will think of you when they are informed of a business that is moving, adding staff etc.
- Use good questions with current clients to generate referrals. Add their responses to your CRM product. If your relationships are positive, don’t be afraid to ask if they might know of someone else who could use your product/service. Do they know of someone on their bowling league or child’s soccer team that could benefit from? Always ask good open ended questions that start with “what” or “how”. Always incorporate in your CRM.
- Utilize unique approaches to prospecting for, such as a service called Sendoutcards.com. The service allows you to personalize hand written cards on the internet and they take care of the sending. All you have to do is choose the card and the message you would like sent. In addition, you can include gift cards or checks as well. Make sure to log this as an activity using your CRM tool.
- Organize your prospects by geography, potential business, and other priorities to determine where your time is best spent.
- Set up a one day prospecting blitz. Offer rewards to employees who set up the highest number of appointments, and generated sales from the day.
- Create a mailer for another business, introduce them to 100 of your best clients from your CRM application and ask if they would be willing to do the same. Ensure that you endorse your partner. People are more receptive to reading something from someone they know.
Finally, prospecting is partially a numbers game but largely based on effort. By doing some or all of these activities on a daily basis and utilizing Customer Relationship Management software you are sure to keep the pipeline full and always have someone that you can talk to regarding your products/services. Keep an open mind, ask good questions, use CRM, and practice everyday and you will be amazed at the results!
