Prospecting-The Lifeblood Of Selling

Evaluate each of the prospecting methods proposed by Larry, John, and Kathryn.

Qualifying leads and prospects is an important first step for anyone’s sales process. To be effective in selling one must have a good start and become as productive as possible in identifying qualified leads. Qualifying leads and prospects plays a very significant role in selling. Without a solid prospect list, it will be difficult to build a sales territory. Finding the potential prospects is one of the most critical phases of a salesperson’s work. If a salesperson is not vigilant, he will lose the potential customers to aggressive competitors. Sales prospecting have been compared to panning for gold. Just as a prospector digs for the gold, using his pick and pan, the sales prospector must also look for qualified prospects using his sales tools.

In the case we can see Larry, John and Kathryn taking about different methods for prospecting. Larry is talking about advertisement and then about providing company’s service to generate the lead which will give valuable information about product and their companies where as John is talking about referral sale given by existing customer. He knows the value of a prospect that has been referred by an existing client happy with their product or service. This prospect is easier to sell than a new lead who knows very little about the company. Qualifying this prospect can be much easier than a lead obtained through other means. John is also talking about attacking on competitors by taking their customer. Kathryn is talking about trade directory and cold calling. She thinks telephone is the greatest sales tool ever invented. It enables salespeople to prospect not only in their own town but around the world as well.

Each of them has their own thought about prospecting the product. But for the product like computer cannot depend on one source of prospecting. In this case we cannot say that Larry’s idea is best or John’s idea is best or Kathryn’s because to generate the prospect for product like computer there has to be mix of each provided by Larry, John, and Kathryn.

What Prospecting system would you recommend? Why?

If I have to do selling for Apple Macintosh and generate lead then I will use mix of all the sources of Prospecting. In every marketplace there are sales nuggets to discover. Effective prospecting system is a critical component of sustainable sales success. Finding the right prospects is the key to successful selling. There are a number of ways to get the required leads. Here in this case, I know my competitor and my customer base. I will make a list of companies who are using computers in their organization because these companies can be good potential customer. When it comes to sales prospecting,