How to Prospect for New Customers

A step-by-step approach for building up your sales pipeline.

By SALES SOURCE   Geoffrey James   May 22, 2013
Full Inc.com Story, Click Here!

For most companies, the ability to find potential customers is the difference between growth and bankruptcy. Here's a systematic approach, loosely based upon a conversation with Thomas Ray Crowel, author of the excellent book Simple Selling.

1. Get a decent list of prospects.

Ideally, you want to be prospecting for customers who are already likely to buy. To do that, draw your list of prospects from the following sources in this order:

1.Referrals. People whom your existing customers have contacted and suggested that they get in touch with you.

2.Networks. People whom you've connected with personally at industry events or online via social networking.

3.Website Visitors. People who've shown an interest in your offerings by accessing your website and leaving contact data.

4.Purchased Lists. People who have the job title that typically buy your offering inside industries into which you typically sell.

2. Create a qualifying script.

Based upon your experience, define a conversational way to ask, during an initial conversation, whether or not the suspect has a budget, authority to spend the budget, and a need for your offering.

In most cases, qualifying scripts are built around open-ended questions that you ask during the conversation. I've provided you with a list of these questions in my previous post "14 Ways to Qualify a Sales Lead."
If you're calling somebody from a purchased list, you'll also want a basic cold-callings script. There's a good model for this in my previous post "A Cold Calling Script That Really Works."

3. Set reasonable prospecting goals.

Set a target for how many prospects you will need in your pipeline order to generate the number of sales that you need. For example, if you must generate five sales a week and on average close one out of fifty prospects, you will need to make 250 calls a week.

Based upon how many of your prospecting calls "go through," estimate the amount of time it will take to make those calls, including the time that will be required to have a meaningful conversation once you've gotten into one.

4. Get into a positive mental state.

Find a place where you won't be interrupted or distracted. Take a few minutes to focus yourself and your thoughts:

1.Be positive. Believe you will succeed. If you fail try again.

2.Be optimistic. Look for the best in people and expect good things to happen.

3.Visualize success. Imagine ALL the emotions you'll feel when you achieve your goal.

5. Make the calls.

'Nuff said.

While doing so, remember to listen as much (or more) as you talk. According to Crowel, the most common prospecting mistake is failing to notice when prospect wants to buy right now. Listen for stuff like this:

•"We've been looking to buy something like this."

•"I was thinking of contacting your firm about this."

•"Oh, yeah, we definitely need to talk."

If you hear something like this, you can skip the script and jump right to the close.

Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world's most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source

A note from one of my students.

It is all about passion! I am truly blessed and humbled by this email. It made me smile today!

7 Rules of Brilliant Marketing

These marketing strategies and concepts can determine the ultimate success of your products, your company, even your career.

Complete Story By: Steve Tobak, Inc. Magazine
 

Click Here For Complete Inc.com Story
 

 

If you think marketing is all about B2B email, lead generation, social media, and advertising campaigns, then I seriously doubt if you'll make it in the business world. Savvy executives and business leaders get marketing. They know it's the key to business success.
Steve Jobs certainly did.

Sure, he was Apple's CEO, but more than anything, he was a consummate marketer. He understood that, more than anything, his job was to come up with products that people really wanted to use--even if they didn't know it themselves. He also knew that product developers live for that sort of thing.
Indeed, Bill Davidow, a legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former Intel executive said, "Marketing must invent complete products and drive them to commanding positions in defensible market segments." He should know. He wrote the seminal book on high-tech marketing.

David Packard, the iconic co-founder of Hewlett Packard, took an even broader view of the significance of marketing when he famously said, "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."

Marketing and business are synonymous. Some of the most powerful business strategies and concepts come from marketing. And they can be applied to any individual, product, or company. Here are seven from my experience in the high-tech industry.

You only need a focus group of one. If it's the right one. Crowd sourcing and collectivism may be popular these days, but business success is almost always the result of a simple idea by an individual or relatively small team. Apple's executives never used focus groups. They had themselves.

The power of positioning. In a competitive market, you either differentiate or die. Of the relatively few things you can actually control, positioning strategy comes second only to the product itself. How you position yourself, your products, your company, is perhaps the most powerful and underutilized tool for differentiating anything.

Control the message. In a world of information and communication overload, controlling the message--what you say and how you say it--is a lost art. If you can boil complex concepts down to simple messages and stories people can connect with, that makes all the difference. Not only does every word count, but so does how and when you say it.

The customer is and has always been king. That doesn't mean you just do what they want. It means that you need to understand your audience, your customer base, and focus on giving them an experience with your company, its products and services, and its people, that will delight them and keep them coming back for more. In a world where just about everyone is focused on themselves, that's how you stand apart.

You can't win without a defensible value proposition. If you can't articulate what you bring to the market that nobody else has or does better than you, you won't beat the competition. And that doesn't mean you can just BS. If it doesn't pass the smell test, if you can't say it with a straight face, if customers don't wholeheartedly agree that it's true, forget it.

Brands still win. Bob Pittman has run everything from MTV and Nickelodeon to Century 21 and Six Flags. While he was president and COO of AOL--back when that meant something--he said this: "Coca Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system. Brands win." Microsoft may not have the cache it did back then, but you know what he meant. Some say branding is dead. Don't believe it. Nothing's changed.

Competitive markets are a zero sum game. It's a competitive world. It takes a lot to win. The equation that determines the success of your product, your company, even your career, has many variables. Business is all about how effectively you use and control those variables, many of which are described above. I guess there are other ways to win, but then, you're just making already tough odds a whole lot tougher.

Steve Tobak is a management consultant, an executive coach, and a former senior executive of the technology industry. He's managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a Silicon Valley-based strategy consulting firm. Contact Tobak; follow him on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. @SteveTobak
 

5 Lessons From Business Deals You Passed Up

1. Assess Opportunities Quickly

2. Money Is Different Than Revenue

3. Money Deals Distract Your Company

4. Debate the Assumptions, Not Partners

5. You Can't Always Measure the Big Opportunity

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Click here to read the entire article!

A Kid With Passion! We Need More Of This... Now!

Jeff Bliss, a High School student [Original Rant Video] .

9 unmistakable symptoms of an entrepreneur

Read the Ventureburn.com article

 

Steps to Close the Deal via Entrepreneur Magazine

 

 

Steps to Close the Deal

About The Entrepreneur Magazine Small Business Solutions Center

Playing the game is one thing. Winning is another. In the real world of day-to-day business, sometimes you'll need quick-hitting, easy-to-follow advice.

 

See more videos here: Entrepreneur Magazine Solutions Center

 

How Kmart Used Social Listening (And Some Nerve) To Create A Ship-My-Pants Funny Viral Hit

By: Rae Ann Fera

Kmart and Draftfcb used some informed risk taking and data smarts to turn a promotion for integrated retailing into a rib-tickling winner.

 

Click here to read the full fastcocreate.com article

 

It's No Secret...JCP is sorry.

JCP's new ad campaign to win back customers.

The new "Sorry" ad coming to a TV near you.

 

 

It's no secret, recently JCPenney changed. Some changes you liked and some you didn't, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing, to listen to you. To hear what you need, to make your life more beautiful. Come back to JCPenney, we heard you. Now, we'd love to see you.

5 Basic Principles of Selling

The essence of what I've learned in over a decade of writing about sales.

Via SALES SOURCE | Geoffrey James

1. Selling is 60 percent listening and 40 percent talking.

When you're having a conversation with a customer, your main goal is always to figure out how (and whether) you can help that customer. This is impossible when your mouth is open.

2. A sales message consists of two sentences.

Like so: 1) why your customers hire you, and 2) why you do what you do better than anyone else. If you can't get your sales message down to these two short sentences, you're not selling, you're blathering.

3. Customers care about their business, not about you.

Every sales conversation should take place from the customer's perspective rather than from your perspective. It's never "my product is great." It's always "here's how I can help."

4. Your reputation always precedes you.

In today's hyperconnected world, you can assume that anyone who might possibly buy anything from you knows exactly who you are. Even if you're calling out of the blue, your life history is just a Google search away.

5. Selling is all about relationship-building.

Contrary to much of the foolishness that gets passed around as "sales wisdom," customers will only buy from you if they trust you, respect you, and like you. Everything else pales by comparison.

Read the entire article from Inc.com, Click Here!

Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world's most visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source

6 Ways To Be A More Courageous Leader

Progress requires courage--but unfortunately, many leaders lack it. Here are simple tips that will help you make tough decisions with confidence.

I have great respect for professional baseball players; they are anything but wimpy. To stand in front of home plate with a ball heading toward your head at 95 miles per hour with nothing but a piece of wood to bat it away takes guts.

 

Life and leadership are a lot like baseball. Even the best batters strike out sometimes. But a true athlete, and courageous leaders, can never run away from the pitch...

 

Click here to see the entire article by Bozell 

 

--Brad Lomenick is president of Catalyst, one of America’s most influential leadership movements, and author of The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials to Becoming a Change Maker. Follow him at @BradLomenick or www.bradlomenick.com.

[Image: Flickr user Stuart Seeger]

 

10 Impressive Stats About Digital Moms #MomStats

Here are 10 impressive stats about these tech-savvy mamas:

1.) Nearly 70% of Moms believe technology helps them to be better moms. (Forbes)

2.) Moms are 38% more likely to own an Internet TV device, such as Apple TV or Roku, than the general population. They are 28% more likely to use a tablet. They are 38% more likley to own a smartphone. (BabyCenter)

3.) Moms spend 6.1 hours per day on average on their smartphones. (TechCrunch)

4.) Moms are 58% more likely to shop via mobile device. (BabyCenter)

5.) In a survey of 1,500 tablet-owning moms, 97% made a purchase in the last month. (Edison Research)

6.) 77% of moms follow 1 or more brands on social media. 23% follow 10 or more brands. (MarketingCharts)

7.) Moms are 61% more likely to visit Pinterest than the average American. (Nielsen)

8.) Almost 25% of a mom's phone apps are for her kids. (MakeUseOf)

9.) 31% of moms spend more than 10 hours a week on their tablet, but less than 2 hours on their tablet. (TechCrunch)

10.) 50% of moms access social media from their phones. (Nielsen)

Want more staggering stats about moms and the technologies they're using every single day? Get the white paper, "Moms & Digital: 20 Stats About Tech-Loving Mamas."

 

Click Here: Read the entire article by Katie Petrillo, Marketing Manager at Punchbowl

 

6 steps to pitch journalists (that will always work)

By Gini Dietrich

Here is a step-by-step process to create this magic for yourself:

1.Choose one newspaper, magazine or blog that makes a difference in your industry. It can be the Wall Street Journal or a trade publication. Choose just one.
2.Comment on an article, blog post or editorial once a week. If you disagree, say so, but do it professionally. Being negative or criticizing without a solution isn't helpful. Professional discourse is.
3.Keep this up.
4.After about six weeks, the journalist will feel like he or she is beginning to know you and will call you for a story in the works.
5.Add another publication every quarter so you have four that you focus on each year.
6.Don't be afraid to go after big publications. If your expertise adds value to the stories they're reporting on, comment away!

Read the full article via PRDaily.com. Click here!