Ah, prospecting: the bane of every sales professional's existence. As a financial advisor or insurance agent, you probably spend incalculable hours looking for potential clients. Of course, you'd rather spend your time selling -- but you can't sell until you have the prospects.
"You came into sales to sell, but it's not working out well," Bill Good writes in his new book, "Hot Prospects: The Proven Prospecting System to Ramp up Your Sales Career" (Scribner 2008).
"Perhaps you wanted to be a financial advisor and help people make their fortune (as well as your own, of course). You probably didn't think that most of your time would be spent searching endlessly for people with money. And worse, you had no idea that people with money wouldn't welcome your call."
As the founder and chairman of Bill Good Marketing Inc., Good is no stranger to the grueling prospecting process. His 30-year-old company, which specializes in helping salespeople boost their sales, is a leading marketing consultant firm for the financial services industry.
In "Hot Prospects," Good reveals his firm's proven techniques for finding the hottest prospects on the market. Following are just a few of the prospecting secrets Good shares.
Out with the old
If you're having a difficult time making sales, you may assume that your closing skills are lacking, the competition is just too fierce, or the price of your product is too high. But Good says that these issues are not the major problems. "The problem is scarcity of prospects," he writes.
In a country with more than 300 million people, prospects shouldn't be scarce. Unfortunately, it seems that salespeople are scaring off prospects with their old-school selling techniques. "The reason for scarcity of prospects lies not in the market, but in our method," Good points out. "And that method is the one I call the Old Way."
The "Old Way" includes such antiquated sales methods as not taking no for an answer, unwavering persistence, and distrust of the buyer. "If you work in insurance, real estate, most financial services ... or just about anything else, you most likely have been trained in the Old Way," Good writes.
However, this ancient style of selling is no longer viable in our high-tech, digital world where we're armed with email, Web conferencing, and online quote programs.
Grab a thermometer
According to Good, all prospects fall into a certain temperature range -- and you should take each prospect's temperature to determine if they're worth your time.
"There are people in your database who are no longer prospects because they bought your product and became clients. Let's just say those clients have a temperature of 212?F," he explains. "At the very bottom of our scale are ill-tempered folk we wouldn't accept as clients for any amount of money. Their temperature is absolute zero."
He explains that you should set your sights on the prospects that fall between these two extremes. Good says a "hot prospect" is 150?F and people who have absolutely no interest, who shouldn't even be considered prospects, are at 0?F.
So, how do you figure out if you have a hot prospect on your hands? Good says that a truly hot prospect is financially qualified to buy, has the capability to make good decisions, and is interested enough to start the sales process and potentially end up as a client.
Do not call means do not call
Good believes that the "Do Not Call" law is one of the biggest challenges for sales professionals in this new era. If you want to survive in the sales industry these days, he says, it is absolutely critical that you know all the rules of this law and can prove that you are abiding by them.
If you're tired of reading "feel-good" motivational books and want some modern sales techniques you can really sink your teeth into, this may be the book for you.
"This is a book for salespeople, sales managers, and business owners who want to improve their sales results in today's changed sales environment," Good writes. "My goal for this book is to help you double your business."
Amy Bell is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to the Agent's Sales Journal. Visit her Web site at www.writepunch.com or email her at amy@writepunch.com. "Hot Prospects: The Proven Prospecting System to Ramp Up Your Sales Career" can be purchased at Amazon.com.
