Prospecting & Qualifying

What if you could increase your conversion rates just by understanding how your clients think? It's not as difficult as you might think.

In this episode of the How to Succeed Podcast, Emily Yepes discusses some common mistakes salespeople make when prospecting for new customers. She explains that a lot of the fear and anxiety around prospecting stems from negative beliefs salespeople have about the process.

There is no one-size-fits all sales coaching model. There are only approaches that have been shown to be successful in particular situations. As the coach, you must identify each individual salesperson’s personal “success code” – and use that code to unlock the salesperson’s potential for success. Here are five tips that have been proven to help sales leaders unlock that code.

Diane, a recent sales hire, got an email from her manager, Luis, suggesting that he accompany her on an initial sales call with a prospect – and then debrief with her on what he’d observed. Diane replied that she thought that was a great idea.
After the meeting with the prospect was over, Luis jotted down some notes. He shared them during his coaching meeting with Diane the next day. “One of the things I noticed about your meeting with Francine,” Luis said, “was that you immediately answered her question about delivery-time windows. How did you feel about how that part of the discussion went?”

The salesperson who claims to “like” prospecting hasn’t ever done it. How can anyone “like” a process that produces such an arena for rejection? When salespeople say they like prospecting, what they might mean is this: “I don’t mind paying the price of prospecting to reach my objectives.”

Here are some of the key questions we coach salespeople to be prepared to ask in the initial phases of a conversation with a prospect.

Eight simple questions about your personal approach to prospecting

Mike Montague interviews Hamish Knox on How to Succeed at Trials and Demos.

When you’re in the middle of a prospecting discussion – that is, when you’re initiating the first real-time voice-to-voice engagement with a possible buyer – what is your goal?

These days, everyone is using online resources to initiate early prospecting discussions via digital media. Which is part of the problem. How do you avoid looking and sounding like everybody else in the digital realm? Below, you will find three simple strategies that will help you to stand out when you are prospecting online.