Prospect and Win 6230 Fairview Road, Suite 200 Charlotte, North Carolina 28210 USA Authors: Keith M. Eades and Jeff Fisher 704-364-9298 www.spisales.com or www.solutionselling.com
Prospect and Win One of the most commonly overlooked attributes of a productive business is its ability to prospect effectively. For most businesses, prospecting is the difference between success and failure. Effective prospecting creates curiosity and interest. Inefficient prospecting is one of the primary reasons for missed sales quotas. Sales Performance International recognizes the necessity of prospecting and offers strategies to combat the typical challenges associated with prospecting in an attempt to help businesses produce greater revenues. Lack of planning, exaggerated workloads, and misalignment are the three major difficulties of prospecting. Prospecting Difficulties Prospecting is a task that most sellers dread, yet it is the foundation of the sales cycle. Sellers are afflicted with three major difficulties during the process. The first prospecting difficulty is a lack of planning. Unapparent to many, effective planning is a crucial element of efficient prospecting. There are many ways to plan effectively, such as focusing on what one is going to sell and being able to concentrate on that product or set of products. When sellers prospect, they should focus their direction towards the same industry and job titles, while working to develop continuity of thought, action, and reaction. When the prospective buyer answers the phone, the seller should not feel it necessary to begin selling immediately. Instead, the seller should try to create interest and curiosity for the buyer. The advanced preparation of prospecting tools, such as pain chains, reference stories, and phone scripts, will help a seller prospect more effectively. The second prospecting difficulty occurs when sellers believe their workload prevents prospecting. Even though many sales people do not comprehend the value of prospecting, the reality remains that, without prospects, pipelines will be empty and sales quotas will not be attained. In order to become a high-performance prospector, develop a few worthwhile prospecting habits. Make prospecting a regular routine by dedicating a certain number of hours each week to prospecting. Consider this time sacred, and do not respond to distractions. Learn to use new skills, including precall planning, to benefit the prospecting effort. The value of spending time to prospect will become apparent once the pipeline is full and more sales are closed. The third and probably most difficult challenge arises when the prospect objects early, often in the very beginning of the call. This is referred to as misalignment. Misalignment occurs when the seller does the wrong things early in the call, increasing the difficulty of regaining the prospect s willingness to listen. Objections rise when the prospect and the seller are on two different planes for instance, when the seller is selling and the prospect is not buying. In prospecting, there are several causes behind the objections so many sellers encounter. While there are many other examples, these four should present a clear picture of the problems associated with misalignment. The seller forgets that in the first few seconds, the prospect is not yet in the process of buying
Prospecting challenges affect sales managers, too. Inaccurate forecasts, lack of a prospecting culture, and a low win ratio are common problems. The prospecting seller uses a sales style and words that remind the prospect of former bad experiences with other sellers The prospecting seller shows little intuition and just wings it The prospecting seller cancels curiosity arousal in favor of immediate selling Sales Management Prospecting Difficulties The problems associated with poor prospecting tend to find their way throughout all levels of a company. One of the larger problems with poor prospecting is that it can lead to a variety of sales management difficulties. The first sales management prospecting difficulty focuses on inaccurate forecasts. Through a significant amount of conversation and interaction with a variety of companies, SPI found that one of the most common complaints from sales managers is that their sales representative s sales forecasts are frequently wrong. Their predictions are too optimistic from the beginning, fueling managers desire to return to the prospecting basics in search of more accurate forecasts. Inaccurate sales forecasts, due to poor prospecting, present a very serious problem for entire companies, and can lead to: Missed earning estimates Disappointed shareholders Plummeting stock prices Angry stock analysts Job loss To accurately forecast a company s sales, managers must first start at the beginning, practicing good prospecting management skills. This encompasses planning who to call on, understanding job-related issues, encouraging the use of job aids, and analyzing organizational interdependencies. Practicing correct prospecting techniques is often the first step to accurate forecasts. To correct problems such as missed sales quotas and inaccurate sales forecasts, a company should examine its prospecting culture. What kind of pre-call planning is done, if any? Does the sales staff target deliberate time for prospecting? Do the sales representatives properly execute their prospecting skills? Are the pipelines full of early prospects? Another common complaint by management is the lack of a prospecting culture in the company. Whether by lack of motivation or low confidence, some sellers tend to focus on the low hanging fruit or the easy business. This is not prospecting; it is polling. Prospecting is going out and finding people who are not looking to buy anything and convincing them to actually look at a business and its products and services. The initial challenge for a business attempting to improve their sales organization is to develop a highperformance prospecting culture. A high-performance prospecting culture uses devices such as: Lead generation program Pre-call planning Prospecting tools Regular times to prospect Sales automation sensitive to prospecting The third prospecting difficulty for sales management is a low prospecting win ratio. Low win ratios are often the result of a dysfunctional prospecting culture. One of the biggest causes, once again, is misalignment, or asking prospects to buy before they are ready.
Looking Not Looking Not Looking vs. Looking In a conceptual market, two types of consumers exist: those who are looking and those who are not. Looking buyers are, today, actively evaluating the seller s company and its product or service. Everyone else in the territory or target market is considered to be Not Looking. Ask two questions during an examination of your conceptual market: What percentage of my potential market is currently engaged in actively assessing buying from me? What percentage of my marketplace is Not Looking at buying anything from me? When prospecting, a seller needs tools to do two things: Get a prospect in your Not Looking territory curious to know more about you and your product Move a prospect from curiosity to admit a pain - preferably one that you can help solve Businesses in the Not Looking territory can also be referred to as those in latent need. A seller or a company has a latent need either when they are unaware of having a problem or when they allow their pain to stay latent by rationalizing that they cannot deal with it. They may feel as though the proposed solution is too expensive, too technical, or too risky. No pain, no change. Get to the power. Power can buy. After these questions have been answered, a company is now ready to pursue more prospecting. Contrary to what some may believe, the Not Looking area is a company s greatest opportunity sector. True prospecting takes place here - prospecting that initiates activity for high-performance sales pipelines by moving prospects from Not Looking to Looking. P x P x V x V x C = Sale The transition from Not Looking to Looking involves five primary variables. Sales Performance International has developed a formula to win sales that uses these five variables: pain, power, vision, value, and control. The combination of these variables generates an increased probability of a sale. Pain It is no coincidence that pain is the first variable in the formula because SPI places great emphasis on finding pain, or a critical business issue. Until a buyer admits to having a problem that you can help solve, you do not have a sincere prospect on your hands. Without recognition or an admission of pain, a potential buyer will not see the need for change. No pain, no change. To alleviate some of the problems associated with prospecting, it is best to look for the prospects in pain, those who would welcome help. A little research can help you identify those companies in your territory that are already in pain. Only when pain is recognized can a sale begin. Power You can t sell to someone who can t buy. This saying references an important strategy to remember and utilize call high, or to someone in the company who has the authority to buy what you are selling. After a seller calls high, he or she must then convince the person in power to admit their pain, or the business problem that needs to be solved. Get to the power. Power can buy. There are a couple of useful prospecting strategies that can help a seller in the process of reaching the power, someone with purchase authority, in a company. The most helpful strategy is pre-call planning. Pre-call planning involves using tools such as a pain chain to show the part of the organization a seller intends to prospect. Reference stories are also great tools, as well as phone scripts. The most important thing to remember is: Be prepared for anything.
The strength of the vision is directly related to the end result: a successful sale. Use value to initiate curiosity and interest about you and your products Evaluation plans keep sellers in control while buyers engage in normal buying behavior Vision The next variable in the equation is vision. Even though the individual was prospected from the Not Looking category, at this point they have already admitted a problem. The seller then has the responsibility to create a vision of a solution for the problem. In the composition of the solution, the seller must share creation of the vision with the buyer. The seller helps craft the vision in such a manner to emphasize his or her company s strengths and differentiate the company from its competitors. Communication with the buyer and effective selling strategy determine the strength of the vision. The strength of the vision is directly related to the end result: a successful sale. Strong visions yield shortened sales cycles, reduced selling costs, and successful sales. Weak visions result in sales cycles that tend to be long, expensive and ultimately unsuccessful. Prospects often remain stagnant in their Not Looking psychology. Value The fourth and a very important variable is value. Value magnifies the vision it shows the prospect the reality of the solution and its results. The importance of value lies in its use to start a sale, advance a sale, close a sale, and measure post-sale results. Sellers use value to initiate curiosity and interest about a company and its products. SPI has designated two prospecting tools that communicate value: Reference story - an account of a past business relationship in which the seller helped a customer prosper or gain revenues Value proposition - a quantified outlook for future success. Control Even though control is the last variable in the formula to win sales, it cannot be overlooked. While the seller has come a long way in the attempt to sell the product, it is not over yet. An evaluation process must be set in place with both the seller s and buyer s agreed participation. Exerting control at this point in the sales cycle secures the seller s position in the buyer s mind. As soon as buyers have a vision of solution, they will shop around to make sure they get the best available deal. Evaluation plans help sellers keep control while buyers engage in normal buying behavior comparing several sellers against each other. Conclusion Prospecting initiates curiosity and interest about a company and its products. It performs a vital function in the sales cycle, but presents many difficulties to sales people. When sales people can overcome typical prospecting difficulties, sales managers can more accurately forecast revenues and improve win ratios. Prospecting behavior often requires change to make this task more effective. Sellers must look in new and different areas for prospects and learn to use strategic tools to move prospects into the sales cycle. The sales cycle begins because of prospecting. Using effective prospecting strategies is the first step in building a high performance sales culture. If you would like to learn more about this topic, please contact Sales Performance International. This white paper was based on the book Prospect and Win by Keith Eades, President and CEO of SPI, and Jeff Fisher, Director of Strategic Planning. 2003 Sales Performance International All rights reserved. The contents of this material are confidential and proprietary to Sales Performance International. Unauthorized use, disclosure or reproduction is prohibited.