Sales Prospecting Process

Hello and welcome to the lesson on Prospecting. Here we will examine the first step of the sales cycle. We’ll explain what prospecting is and how salespeople generate leads. We’ll also define warm and cold leads and explain why warm leads are much more valuable in sales.

Section 1

Sales prospecting is the first step of a sales cycle and it involves reaching out to potential customers in hopes of finding new business. According to Sean McPheat, it can be defined as ‘the act of researching, contacting and beginning conversations with potential customers.’ It is the foundation upon which you build any sales process and the modern sales profession would probably not exist without it.

It recently became common for some business to have a team

Social media profiles may provide valuable information about individuals and businesses. You can even make first contact by connecting to your prospective customers directly through these channels.

The second step of the prospecting process requires you to contact your list of potential customers and turn them into leads. In his book ‘Lead Generation for the Complex Sale’, Brian Carroll defines a lead as the contact information for ‘a potential customer that wants to learn more about what you have to sell and that has acknowledged it has a business problem that you could help solve.’

There are three prospecting methods you can use to do turn potential customer into leads: cold calling, email and business networking.

Cold calling means using the telephone to contact people who are not expecting your call. If you manage to get through to decision makers, this method turns into a direct, one-on-one interaction with each potential customer. You can use this opportunity to find out relevant information that can help later in the sales process, such as their profile and basic

The outcome of a prospecting process is a list of leads to be contacted.

Section 2

We can classify leads as cold and warm.

Cold leads can be defined as prospective customers, or prospects that have never been contacted before, have never displayed an interest in your company’s products or services and are not expecting to be contacted.

Warm leads are prospects who have inquired about a product or service, or they have been contacted before and displayed interest. They might also have confirmed their availability for further dialogue.

You’ve probably heard the old adage ‘time is money’. This is particularly true when referring to any type of sales initiative. Since warm leads have displayed a certain amount of interest, they are much more likely to purchase. Your time is much better spent on contacting warm leads.

Section 3

Let’s take the example of a bank attempting to contact two prospects, with the purpose of selling a new credit card product, which offers discounts for a significant number of