Sales Prospecting Skills is The Key To Sales Success | Sales Prospecting Training

Selling is a process.

One of the biggest problems for many salespeople is not understanding that selling is a process, not an event. Effective selling is not just closing the sale, better prospecting, or more effective sales presentations.

Although all of these are important in their own way, effective selling today means blending each of these together in such a way that the prospect trusts, believes, and respects you and your organization, and wants or needs your product or service to help them improve the quality of their life or business enterprise.

For many years traditional sales training focused on the “close of the sale” as the most important element. Then the ’70s and ’80s rolled around, and the hot topics were prospecting, qualifying, and getting to the key decision makers. In the ’90s, the focus shifted to consultative selling. What will the next decade bring? Who knows for sure? What we do know now is that to sell successfully is only half of the task. The balance is keeping the business. Organizations spend millions of dollars annually to attract and sell new business. Then they lose it for any number of reasons and have to replace it. So the saga continues.

Selling is about finding good potential prospects who can benefit from your products or services, persuading them to buy from you, and then maintaining positive relationships with them that ensure repeat and referral business as well as positive references. Are you focusing on only one particular aspect of the sales process as you sell? Are you weak in any particular part?

Each element of the process is intricately related to all the others. For example, let’s take prospecting. If you have a poor prospect, it will be difficult to give them a solid sales presentation. It will be impossible to overcome their sales objections, and as for closing the sale— forget it.

How about the attitude issues in the sales process? Let’s say you lack confidence in the quality of your products. That will affect your willingness to find new prospects. If you do find some, it will impact your ability to give a confident sales presentation. And so on.

How about one more? Let’s say you have a fear of rejection. That will impact your willingness to ask questions, qualify your prospects, and discuss sales presentation issues that may be perceived as less than ideal. And asking for the order? Not in this lifetime.

I am sure you see my point. If you are going to sell successfully, you can’t improve just one aspect of the sales process. You can’t make up for poor prospecting with tricky closes. You can’t make up for poor product knowledge with fancy footwork.

Since the skill of prospecting is the skill that ultimately contributes to success or failure, it’s the best place to begin taking a look at the mistakes salespeople make in this area.

Remember, you will never turn a poor prospect into a customer with a great product or service, good presentation, or tricky close. However, a well-qualified prospect will help you sell them. One of the weakest areas of poor salespeople is the skill of prospecting. Master this, and the rest of the sales process will take care of itself.