Maximizing Your Potential!

The 3 ‘W’s’ of Prospecting are:
1. Who – is the person you should be talking with?
2. What – does he want? (notice it does NOT say what do I have to sell him that he may want!)
3. When – is he going to buy?

You must make sure that you are talking with the decision maker, that he is in the market for what you offer and that he needs it pretty quickly!

We will take it a step further with AIDA.
1. Who is Asking?
2. Who is Influencing?
3. Who is Deciding?
4. Who is Actually using?

You must make sure that you know who is asking and if he/she is the one who will be using the product, as well as, being the decision maker, or not. Who will help in the decision making process and make sure that all of these people, be it 4 different entities or all rolled in to one, when you make your presentation. Otherwise, it is a waste of time.

The 10 GOLDEN RULES of Prospecting:
1. Quantify your efforts. Collect lots of names. The amount of sales you make depends in large part on the amount of prospects you contact.
2. Qualify your efforts. BEFORE you meet a prospect collect enough data to be able to judge whether you can get a close NOW.
3. Direct your efforts. Select first those who will give you big sales. Find out what public is ideal for your product or service. Do surveys.
4. Never stop prospecting. Leave your card everywhere!
5. Use all of your available existing contacts; friends, colleagues, etc. Propose an exchange for each name given, who is qualified to purchase.
6. A bad prospect can give you a good one. Take advantage of being there or on the phone to ask him/her for a few good people to contact. What do you lose? If you don’t ask, you don’t get! You would be surprised at how much people are willing to help.
7. Be organized. Keep track of every prospecting cycle. Build up a prospect file, make it as big as possible. Top sales people try to increase their database by 20% each month!
8. A small prospect can become a big one. Communicate with your prospects on a regular basis. Allow them to communicate back as much as possible.
9. Don’t ever give up. Persistence is a major quality. If you start working on a prospect, don’t stop. Consider he is yours!
10. Your attitude with a prospect is what may have him becoming a customer. It is not a matter of coincidence, YOU make the difference. The art of serving starts with prospecting.

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There was a survey done by the New York Sales Club a while back as to what a salesperson’s success rate was after each attempt to close. The results were pretty interesting:
1st Attempt to Close 8% said Yes
2nd Attempt 14% said Yes
3rd Attempt 18% said Yes
4th Attempt 27% said Yes
5th Attempt to Close 44% said Yes

Now, if you continued to carry this forward you would get up close to 80%.

But let’s face it you will probably never make it to 100% closing because there are many factors which are out of your control, such as, the person has just lost their job or any number of other unforeseen factors.

However, there is an interesting correlation here. Another survey was done that showed that 80% of salespeople gave up after the third attempt to close. The 20% who persisted beyond the third attempt got 80% of the sales.

So, what happens is that the salesperson seeks to interest the buyer and meets with a person who is trying to pretend that there is no sale. He’s got his attention on other things and is trying to ignore the sales person.

Then the sales person starts to really desire the sale. He’s desiring to get the sale done but the prospect is doing his or her best to inhibit the sale. They may say something like,

‘I’m just not sure if now is the right time.’ or ‘We have decided we need to think about it.’

They are trying to put on the breaks on this process.

The salesperson then tries to pressure the client, ‘This is the best time to purchase this product,’

And get’s pressure back from the prospect, saying, ‘We said NOW is not the right time!’

And right about the time the prospect starts to desire the product or service the salesperson starts to inhibit the sale saying something like, ‘You are probably right. This is not the best deal for you.’

Here the poor prospect is ready to buy and totally interested and the salesperson is ignoring the prospect. You think this seems to far fetched but it happens all the time.

Remember, 80% of sales people give up at 3 above, when both of them are at enforce (the sales person pressuring the prospect and the prospect insisting that he’s not interested.)

All the salesperson has to do is stay at interest and let the prospect move up the scale to meet him or her. This is super simple and super powerful!

Good luck!

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