The Importance of Prospecting

A major part of sales success is prospecting, although most people see prospecting as an annoying and frustrating part of the job. During prospecting, people often cold call, which results in an insane amount of rejection. Although cold calling results in very few sales, it is a great exercise to improve your sales skills. Even though you don’t have to like prospecting, you have to do it in order to become successful in that field of sales.

Even though it is not seen as fun and doesn’t have a good ratio of actual sales being made it is very helpful. The reason for this is that it forces you to make efforts to connect with someone who you may know nothing about. It also makes you explore the most natural entry points to conversations about your business. Cold calling is meant to be a sorting and selection activity rather than a direct sales strategy. With cold calling, there shouldn’t be much pressure put on the salesperson because the amount of success from the call will be minimal. But rather have fun with it and realize there is a major value to the exercise.

A major point that Professor Sweet made was that instead of trying to make the sale from prospecting you should go for the appointment. The reason for this is that it is extremely difficult to make the sale in such a short amount of time without building any sort of trust or relationship. So when you go for the appointment it allows the customer to not feel rushed and the salesperson to gain their trust. This will result in a greater possibility of making the sale. So in all prospecting isn’t meant to be a sales method but rather to be a way to build the foundation for the sale to be made in the future.