Hello Sales Pros...so we are here in the prospecting section of the sales cycle. Ask any applicant in a sales interview, "What is the most important part of the sales cycle?" And the answer the interviewer is looking for is obviously, "Closing" and he is right, but of all the activities that are involved in sales there is one activity that is equally important and some would argue is even "more" important than closing.

That activity is usually called "PROSPECTING" or cold calling. It is called so many names, canvassing, cold calling, "hot knocking" - anyway, you get the gist.

You see, without prospecting you have no prospects, and without prospects you can't "close" the sale and therefore acquire a new customer.

Prospecting is nothing more or nothing less than initiating contact with a potential buyer for your product or service and providing him with an "initial benefit statement" (benefit statements will be covered in another segment) that will get his/her attention and allow you the opportunity to sell that prospect your product or whatever it is that you are selling.

There are numerous methodologies to sales prospecting, but for the sake of this lesson, we are going to focus on just one. In person or (Cold Calling)

Before you break into a cold sweat and start shaking, rattling and rolling, keep in mind that this part of the sales cycle like so many others is a really a "mind-set". It is a state of mind my friend and if you approach this as a chore guess what...that is exactly what it will be. However if you approach it as a... what I like to call "walking and talking" it is fun and can be if you allow it to be.

Why cold call in person you ask? Well for one thing when you cold call, you have a number of advantages. The first advantage is you may get to speak with the "DM" or decision maker of the organization but there are other advantages as well, for one thing is the fact that you can see the actual location, also you can ask a lot of questions which will enable you to surmise whether this is going to be a good prospect for you, let's say you are selling "telephone systems and you walk in and see that they are using a stencil machine and one of those old time rotary telephones, (you know which ones I am talking about) chances of you selling him a "sleek state of the art interactive telephone system with all the bells and whistles are pretty much close to nil. You saw the office, you know that they have been in business 50 years (and it shows) they DON'T buy new stuff so what does it tell you....MOVE ON this is not the sales prospect for you. Why? Because they don't spend money, period!

Yet another advantage of calling on an account in person is that 9 out of 10 times you are going to be met with the screener this is usually a receptionist or someone who can direct you to the appropriate person that you can talk to about your offering, their job is to ask you what it is that they can assist you with and depending on the culture of the organization it is their job to "block you" hence the screen or direct you to the appropriate person or department.

For the purpose of this example you need to get the screener on your side, because if you're main objective is to see Mr. or Ms. Right, a screener can provide you with invaluable information that can be used on future call or follow up telephone calls when you call to schedule the appointment for your introductory meeting.

Some examples are:

Who is the person who handles the purchasing of XYZ for you company?
How old is your current system?
Is it owned or lease?
How long ago did you get it?

The list is endless; the point is this is a great opportunity to get a lot of valuable information that allows you to build up your arsenal for when you make your "follow up call" to the DM or decision maker to schedule an appointment.

Please... as an FYI when you are asking questions, be subtle, in other words don't make it sound like an interrogation. Nothing annoys people more than them giving you a few minutes of their time and because you are a bit over excited, you forget to be conscious of your questioning strategy.

If anything this should go something similar the example below:

You: Hello I am John with XYZ Copier Systems; I would like to speak to the person who handles the acquisition of office equipment for your company, who would that be please?

Screener: Oh, that would be Mr. Smith, but he is not in now.

You: No problem - I would like to call him to schedule an appointment, do you have his card?

Screener: Sure, here you go.

You: Wow, I see you have a SuperFast XYZ copier model, when did you get it?

Screener: Oh, about 3 years ago, I think.

You: Do you know if it was purchased or leased?

Screener: I am not sure - I think it was leased.

You: You probably do a lot of volume on that, huh?

Notice the subtlety when trying to get their average monthly volume; you don't want to continue with the same line of questioning as you did with the previous questions because that in turn becomes interrogative and annoying. In this case you did not ask a question, yet you made an observation or comment that in many case will elicit the answer to a question you need answered for the sake of preparing for the follow up call.

Source: John Morales link