Prospecting & Qualifying

A salesperson striving toward success and prospecting for new clients may think that he or she must do something grandiose to draw customers away from the competition. Occasionally, something spectacular may be just what's needed, but it's not practical to do on a regular basis. Incorporate the following four simple gestures into your interactions with potential clients to experience greater conversion success.

Many sales organizations get caught up in the details of educating or convincing their prospect to buy. Some sellers might even ask “What do we need to do to earn your business?” and worry about what they can do to facilitate the buying process. “What do you see as next steps?” is another common question that salespeople ask. These sellers lose sight of the fact that it’s the prospect that needs to do something for a sale to happen.

Referrals and introductions should be central to building a quality pipeline for our business. In my research, most of us are leaving up to 75% of the available referrals and introductions on the table. Most of us get referrals and introductions even if we do not ask! However, having a well-thought process and goals for pursuing them can dramatically increase our referral business.

Social selling, or using social media during the prospecting and sales function, may very well be the “three-point line” of the sales world. It is a modern-day creation that can be perceived as a marketing gimmick or a cheap stunt, but it has been around for almost 20 years and people are now starting to see its real value.

Special guest, Brian Sullivan, Sandler trainer and author shares his thoughts about how to succeed at enterprise selling. It is an inside look at the new Sandler Training book, Sandler Enterprise Selling: Winning, Growing, and Retaining Major Accounts.

You don't have to be a tech wizard to grow your business through social selling. You can use your network of business contacts, to take a proactive, client-centered view of prospecting on social media. This special bonus podcast cuts through all the noise, tech-speak, and misconceptions about LinkedIn and social selling.

At Sandler Training, we believe in not solely talking about features and benefits during your sales call, but rather focusing on the prospect’s needs. However, there is a time for presenting, once you have qualified the opportunity. Once a prospect is fully qualified in Pain, Budget, and Decision, then it is time for you to make the presentation, and you want to make that presentation as persuasive as possible.

If your goal is to find more prospects, get more and better referrals, and make more commission dollars in 2016 than you did in 2015, consider upping your social selling game. Here are four quick tips that will help you to avoid some common mistakes online.

A major frustration for salespeople is dealing with prospects that can't seem to make a decision.  Perhaps the biggest of those frustrations is struggling with prospects who indicate the desire to make a decision (and to do so by a certain date), but when the date rolls around, they invariably need more time. How many times have prospects told you, "I need more time to make a decision"?  Too many? In those situations, it's easy to blame the prospect for being indecisive, uncommitted, and a procrastinator. But, does the prospect deserve all of the blame?  Shouldn't some of it fall on your shoulders?  Perhaps, the major share? 

When someone hands you a business card and says, "you should call this person", it's not really a referral. Without more information, it is more like they're sending you on a cold call. Cold calling is way down the list of favorite prospecting activities for most salespeople, and sometimes that frustration can spill over to referrals.