The Love Scout

Wouldn’t it be great to prospect with confidence knowing you have the plan that will help you set more appointments? Then you’ll be glad you found these 5 prospecting tips. If you use them you’ll be guarantee to make better use of your prospecting time by closing your prospects for more appointments.

Prospecting Tip #1: Prospect Daily

Prospecting is like eating. If you don’t do it every day you’ll die. With prospecting you won’t actually cease to exist, however, you’re business will. Professional salespeople prospect every day. It’s important to block off specific times on your calendar for prospecting activities such as phone calling and mailing.

Treat your prospecting time the same way you would any other appointment, otherwise it will never get done.

Get focused on your prospecting activities by closing your office door and having messages taken for incoming calls until your prospecting time is up. I’ve found the best time to prospect is first thing in the morning. Your fresh and it gets the most important task in the sales process done first.

Prospecting Tip #2: Become a Specialist

This is the age of specialization. People want to do business with people who specialize in their particular problem. You wouldn’t go to a foot doctor to have a heart bypass. And you wouldn’t go to a criminal lawyer if you need to set up a corporation.

What is your specialty? Find one and use it in all your prospecting activities. If you don’t know what it is ask your past and current clients why they bought from you. They’ll give you some insight in to your specialty.

Then use it in all your promotional pieces. Advertise it every where. Put it on your business card. Use it to attract the kind of prospects you’re looking to work with.

Prospecting Tip #3: Use a Script

Don’t wing-it. There’s only one thing worse than listening to a salesperson read a script over the phone and that’s listening to one without a script. It’s important to not only have a script but to practice it until it flows from your lips.

You should know the script word for word without reading it. Don’t read it when you’re talking to a prospect, however, keep it in front of you to refer back to when you get off the track. Keep refining and making your script better and more powerful. After all it is the life blood of your sales business.

Prospecting Tip #4: Sell the Benefits of Meeting With You

Many salespeople want to tell the prospect how great their company is or how great they are. People don’t care about you. People want to know what’s in it for them. So make sure you include in your script the benefits the prospect will gain by meeting with you personally.

Make a list of the features of your product or service and then list the benefits of each of those features. If you need some help with this your past and current clients can be a great help. The best way to get the appointment is to show them the benefits they will receive by meeting with you.

Prospecting Tip #5: Don’t Try to Sell Over the Phone

The purpose of prospecting is to get face to face with the prospect so you can qualify them and sell them your product or service. That’s all. Don’t try to sell your product or service over the phone. The main focus of prospecting is to sell the appointment, so concentrate on that outcome.

I know there are salespeople who are only selling over the phone, however, that’s a subject for a different article.

Using these prospecting tips can send you on your way to having a calender filled with appointments that lead to sales. Ignoring them can leave you with a lot more time to prospect. The choice is yours.

gold detectors

The real name for all sales is prospecting, the name of selling is prospecting, and the foundation for every successful sale is prospecting. Prospecting is the only way any of us can hope to succeed in sales. Your eventual success will be determined entirely by your ability to prospect. And what is prospecting? It is simply seeing enough of the right people at the right time.

Once you master the tools of prospecting, your talents will allow you to achieve the success you desire. By learning proven prospecting techniques, you will begin to see that absolutely everyone is a prospect! To begin with, you’ve got to develop a prospecting awareness. Here are the four steps to doing so:

Step #1 — Expect Class-A prospects to enter your life. You attract what you seek. When you are looking for the right type of prospects, you will find them!

Step #2  — See Class-A prospects everywhere. Define for yourself what a Class-A prospect looks like, then tune in and you will find exactly what you are looking for.

Step #3 — Believe you have what people want and need. Believe that your prospects want and need what you have to offer. The only thing left is for you to make the presentation.

Step #4 — Set a goal never to need directories or lists. Talk to people you know and people they know. Lists and directories should be last on your list of prospecting resources.

Once you’ve developed a prospecting awareness, invest time in developing your own system that utilizes your unique personality and attributes. Your system should be based on these seven ways to create a flow of non-stop prospects, in this order:

Develop centers of influence. Always ask for referrals. Use your powers of observation. Book speaking engagements. Develop nests or vertical markets. Make use of drop-bys or fill-ins. Use lists and directories.

With prospects flowing non-stop to you, it will be vitally important to track each one. Here is a proven system that will enable you to manage your prospects:

Step #1 — Log each name. Use index cards, your computer, or a handheld device to record the names of your prospects.

Step #2 — Classify A, B, or C. Classify each prospect from most likely to least likely to buy.

Step #3 — Learn the formula. Learn the “salesperson + prospect = sale” formula. Every sale equals a 10, so if you are starting out as a level-3 salesperson, you need a level-7 prospect to make the sale: 3+7=10. That is why you call on better prospects first.

Step #4 — Organize your prospects. Organize your log of names from Class A to Class C.

Step #5 — Schedule a time to meet. Schedule an appointment with your prospects (Class A first).

Step #6 — Make the presentation. Make the presentation and make the sale.

Step #7 — Get referrals. Get referrals from your new friend. This is a key step that you will never miss.

Step #8 — Repeat. Repeat this cycle from the top.

If you were to take all the elements of selling, from product knowledge to enthusiasm and from motivation to attitude, and had to choose just one element from which to base your entire sales success, you could choose prospecting, and you would succeed magnificently! There is great power in prospecting!

gold dredges

Prospecting is defined as the act of looking forward to/expecting/anticipating a potential buyer or customer and it involves mental consideration.  Effective prospecting is expecting/anticipating a potential buyer or customer more effectively (i.e. in a way to avoid loss or waste; to gain a desired effect).   The question here is: How do you find your prospects to build your network marketing business?  Are you prospecting and doing so effectively?  Are you looking for, considering your prospects OR are you in front of anyone and everyone?  That is not effective prospecting.  Are you approaching your Warm Market: i.e. family, friends, neighbors, etc. and asking or even begging them to listen to you?  If so, this is not effective prospecting.  Are you making that list of 100 people without going through a mental process of considering their needs?  This is not effective prospecting.

When I started in network marketing a few years ago, I reached out to my cold market (my warm market being short lived) by placing small, inexpensive ads in local papers or handing out business cards and brochures and I followed-up with appointments…on the average 1 in 20 of my contacts.  Then travelling to the appointed destination to meet with my “potential prospect”, I would expound on my opportunity, educate him/her on my product, and proceed to convince him/her that what I had was what they needed.  An hour or two and a few cups of coffee (on me) later I was on my way home or perhaps to another such appointment.  I spent 50-80 hours reaching out in this manner before obtaining ‘a’ customer or enrolling ‘a’ Rep.  Does this sound at all familiar?  Believe me, this is not effective prospecting!

Fortunately, I was introduced to the Art & Science of Marketing (but not after struggling for 3 years) and learned to ‘target’ my prospects:  to look for/consider individuals that had a need, want, and desire for what I had.  I learned that effective prospecting had nothing to do with convincing.  For sure Effective Prospecting scrapped what my company was heralding: “Everyone who breathes is your market!”  Does this sound familiar?  Well, it is absolutely false! 

By implementing effective prospecting along with the most economical marketing tool on the planet today…the phone, I find hundreds of targeted prospects to talk to every day.  Given that two hour scenario above, I now dial, connect with, and close a true prospect into my business every 7 to 8 hours and you can too.  Effective prospecting is simple.  It is not only effective in terms of your time, but also your money and energy.  Time is money and, for me, my time is precious!

Effective prospecting is the difference between someone purchasing and someone not giving a hoot about your product.  Effective prospecting results in the right individuals joining your business each and every week versus monthly.  Effective prospecting has everything to do with the right message to the right person and making a connection.  Effective prospecting is about qualifying an individual for what you have and how you can help them.  Effective Prospecting is key to building a network marketing business with ease and confidence…ultimately resulting in success. 

Gold Detector