Prospecting – Fishing in your Sales Pond
In any business we’d say it’s best to source new business in a wide variety of ways. Gaining warm referrals will generally reduce the sales cycle, but will leave you dependent upon the referrer for the types of prospects that you’re referred to.
Conversely Direct Prospecting, or cold calling, will probably have a longer sales cycle but does have the advantage of strategically targeting specific prospects.
The most successful businesses gain new customers from a multitude of sources. We view this as fishing in your sales pond!
So how do you determine the best way to prospect? Consider the following:
- What’s worked well for your business in the past that you should continue doing?
- What hasn’t worked so well that you should stop doing?
- What should you start doing that you think would be valuable?
- What are your competitors doing that you could learn from and might be valuable for you?
- Run innovation and creativity sessions with your sales team. Think outside of the box.
- Get your team to develop sales activity plans based around QDQ https://www.hawthornbusinessgroup.co.uk/whats-more-impor…ults-or-activity/ ?
- Constantly review and update these plans in 1:1s and in team meetings.
- If you’re struggling to get face to face meetings consider joining networking groups. Make sure these groups are such that contain prospects for your business, or people that might introduce you to prospects.
Sales is a non-exact science. What works for one business may not work for the next. So be innovative and creative. Don’t be afraid to try new things. Experiment. You never know where your next customer might come from. Encourage your sales team members to experiment also!
But remember that activity is the key to sales. Have your salespeople develop their own activity plans and hold them accountable for following them.