Customer Success

Are You Maximizing Your Prospecting Effort?

November 8, 2010

Is Prospecting Part of your Sales Process?

In almost everything you do as a business, operating efficiently and at maximum capacity is key. That’s never more true than at the start-up and expansion stages, when both financial and human resources can be limited and time is of the essence.

Sales teams must maximize every conversation they have with a prospect. Call volume is obviously a key indicator of prospecting success. But asking those prospects key questions and exploring each contact’s potential is essential to maximizing the practice of building a sales team.

Here are the five pillars of prospecting:

Pillar 1: Primary Prospect

This is the person you have on the phone. You may be targeting them as a prospect, so they’re an obvious starting point. Is your solution a fit for their business? They could be a prospect, but they might not be the only one.

Pillar 2: Internal Prospect

Your prospecting mission can spiderweb out from your primary prospect to other areas within that same organization. Are their other teams, office locations, or sites that might be able to use the same solution? It’s worth investigating.

Pillar 3: External Prospect

A sales person’s job is to get a prospect on the phone and see if they can provide value to their company. But you can sometimes count on that prospect for external referrals, too. Ask them if they have any friends or former colleagues that might have interest in your solution.

Pillar 4: Partner Prospect

Companies often have strategic partners within their own industry. Ask the prospect if you can help them out with other initiatives they’re working on. What are some of the projects they’re executing now or plan to execute in the future? You might be able to help solve several of their issues.

Pillar 5: Other Prospect

Every prospect has their own network that they rely on. If you’ve built up enough trust with the prospect, ask them if they participate in any user communities or groups that might be interested in learning more about your solutions.

 

The bottom line is to maximize every live body you have on the phone. Making 60 cold calls a day is great and it will likely lead to filling your sales pipeline with qualified leads and opportunities. But how many prospects are you leaving on the table by not considering each of the five pillars above?

SVP Marketing & Sales

<strong>Brian Zimmerman</strong> was a Partner at OpenView from 2006 until 2014. While at OpenView he worked with our portfolio executive teams to deliver the highest impact value-add consulting services, primarily focused on go-to-market strategies. Brian is currently the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at <a href="http://www.5nine.com/">5Nine Software</a>.