In this blog post I am going to go in depth in to the Prospecting… an important skill set required to be successful in new gen sales…

Welcome to episode number 2….

so in the first episode I shared the first skill set which is “Ability to close” or simply put… “Closing” the first out of six…

Now let’s jump into the second skill set which is prospecting…

Now the internet has shifted the power into the hands of the buyer. Prior to the internet era, the sellers controlled the information flow. Now, the buyers have access to all the information they need in their finger tips and it is very easy for them to find someone else if you are not treating them properly.

So the number of opportunities are becoming less and less and you have to compete more and more in the open market.
When you don’t have a proper prospecting plan… the following things will start happening…
– You will desperately chase the one or two leads in your hand.
– You will waste time by chasing unqualified opportunities
– You will exhaust yourself and practically guarantee failure.

So, it is important that you have a plan to build your dream clients pipe line and and there are 6 steps in building a prospecting plan which I am going to walk you through in this blog post…

1. Building a List of your dream clients 
and how can you do that? There are six different types of activities which you can do to get hooked with them. The first social media platform to start with is linkedin. linkedin is the best place to get started because most of the professionals are on linkedin and it is easy to find their profiles on linkedin. Look for the decision makers profiles on linkedin and give a connection request. Once they accept your connection request, send them a private message thanking them for accepting the connection request and also gently introduce yourself and your expertise.

From here you can start building relationships with them.

b. Ask your existing clients for referrals. You can hook up all your referrals and keep broadcasting value added information’s to them by creating your own digital channels.

c. Ask your distributors, dealers and vendors for referrals.-

Not only asking your existing clients for referrals work, but also your distributor’s dealers and vendors also works magic. Again bring all these referrals into one basket and get connected with them through online channels. Keep asking them for referrals so that you stay on top of their mind and you stand the first chance when the need arises in their circle.

d. Join Networking organizations and associations like BNI, CII, NASSCOM, CEO communities and online communities and groups. Here people will be ready to accept your connection request and look at you as member of the group which gives you an opportunity to network and build relationship.

e. Conferences and Trade Shows- Conference and trade shows is a comfortable place to meet your prospective clients. As you walk through the trade shows or conferences, be ready to gently introduce yourself and exchange your valuable cards.

f. Social Media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube should be part of your plan. Out of all these platforms LinkedIn and Facebook has in built lead generation campaign objectives and you can generate leads by running ad campaigns using their ads manager.

2. The second step in building your prospecting plan is nurturing your prospects. Do you Remember the Ten agreements which you have to gain that we discussed in the Episode 1? Now the next step in nurturing your leads is to keep adding value to them by doing research in the niche of your prospect and giving them some valuable insights.

 I show how to create this value chain in my email marketing automation system.

3. The third step is building a Prospecting Funnel: Start building your funnels. We will discuss these funnels in depth in the funnel building formula course a bonus course which comes along with my email marketing automation system growth bundle. This includes those activities which you do to get your leads to agree to invest their time and explore opportunities. The leads becomes a prospect, if they agree to invest their time and agree to explore opportunities.


4. The fourth step is to use scripts Scripts: Many of the sales people think that using scripts will sound unnatural and they think it spoils their spontaneity. Which is a wrong notion. Successful sales people use scripts in their day to day sales calls and routine. And scripting is again a skill set which needs to be developed. Write down your scripts and practice them till it becomes part of your system.

5. Fifth step. Make prospecting as part of your Daily Ritual: Allocate 1 to 2 hours in a day for prospecting activities.

6. The sixth step is to create an Plan of Action: The most important and crucial part of any strategic plan is taking action. So don’t procrastinate when it comes to prospecting. Have a plan of action prepared and put that into use.

Don’t confuse your research timing with prospecting. Have a separate time for researching. Researching is building a list of dream clients you want to crack, identifying the right connections inside that company, identifying the stake holders, formal and informal decision makers and preparing a list of those people whom you want to connect with.

Prospecting is sending those connection requests and asking for the meeting, in other words getting your dream client to invest his time and getting him to explore opportunities…

there is no general rule of thumb on the number of calls you make asking for the appointment to the number of meetings you get.

It varies from person to person within the same company also. It also depends upon the industry, the complexity of the product or the solutions which you are offering.

To get a elevated level of understanding on how you can use email marketing automation to put prospecting into work… and how you can use it for your business… get free access to my email marketing automation blueprint where you can learn more and go and implement some of the knowledge which I share there…

Click here and sign up for the same….

Before that…

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Have a great day…