Prospecting

Any good sales person would tell you that prospecting is one of the most important activities in order to get continuous business at the same time it is the most disliked activity too for most.

I would like to share a story here which shows the importance of prospecting. A guy (lets call him John) gets a job as a insurance sales person. He attends the product training course and the sales training course. There the trainer teaches his students the various techniques used in selling. Pospecting was one of the techniques that was taught in that class. After the training when John joins his office, he is introduced to the senior members of his team. They try passing their own wisdom to him. When John mentions about prospecting, they start laughing at him and tell him that prospecing is a waste of time. They tell him to concentrate only on the phone enquiries and the cusomers who come to their office wanting to buy their products. They tell him that if he waits in the office like them he too can sell like them. John takes this advice and starts enthusiastically by speaking to the people who call up the offfice equiring about the products. By following this routine he soon found that he could only sell to few of them and realized that this was not enough to reach his target. Still he continues this methods for few months and he is soon given a warning letter by his company. John is devastated and does't know what to do. He writes to his father about his problem. His father asks him to go and meet a friend of his Mr. Nair who is a rich industrialist with a lot of friends and influential contacts.

So the very next day John puts on his best suit and goes to met his fathers friend. Mr. Nair speaks to John and asks him how is his job as an insurance sales person is. John tells him how the people are not buying the products and how he doesn't have a client base as he is new in the job. He then asks Mr. Nair to help him. He tell him to introduce him to all his freinds, so that he can sell his companys products to them. Mr.Nair tells hm to wait and goes inside his office. He comes back in few minutes with ten names and telephone numbers and gives to John. John is happy and goes back enthusisatically. He calls all ten of them and is even able to sell to two of them. He is happy that he made two sales during the week from this method in addition to attending to phone enquiries and customers coming to their office asking about the company's products. This was the most productive week that John has had since joining the office. He goes back to Mr. Nair and shares his story very enthusisatically. Then he asks for few more names. Mr. Nair once again goes to his office again and comes back with ten more names. John goes back happy, calls all the ten of them and this time sells to four of them. He is very happy that he is suddenly one of the top selling sales executive in his branch. He then goes to met Mr. Nair and thanks him for giving him all the wonderful leads. He requests for few more names. Mr.Nair goes to his office and comes back with the telephone directory this time round. He then says to John 'Son, the names I gave you were from this directory. I have already highlighted the ones I have given you so far. Now it is your turn to call the rest of them.


The following points are the essence of this story:


1. Never trust your father's friends (just joking). What it teaches is that the first place to look for leads when selling is your own inner circle of friends/relatives/fathers and mothers friends/sister and brothers friends. They are the easiest to start with.

2. Prospecting is a never ending process. The more you do it, the better you become at it.

3. This method is not easy and it needs a lot of discipline. You have to do it consistently.


Finally, if you keep this as a part of Job-Responsibility then the sales staff know what they are supposed to do. This can be measured from time to time and targets can be given to the sales staff and managers. Please remember if your staff is not doing anything to find new business then they will be complaining all the time.


Well thats all from me now.