3 Practical Tips To Improve Your Sales Prospecting Plan
A successful business need not necessarily be a greenfield plan that resolves to fix a problem that no one has addressed. However, it definitely should not aim at solving a problem that does not exist. Creating a market for a gap that exists is easier; than creating one where you have to hard sell to a customer to buy your product. Once you create a relevant product, understand the market scope, and have targeted the audience, you can use sales prospecting strategies to attract the leads and convert them to paid customers.
Without market research to identify the need and saleability of your product, it is difficult to analyze the parameters of the target audience. Creating brand awareness in places where there may never be product viability will dilute efforts and yield negative results. Instead of spending time selling a comb to a bald person, interesting them in hair transplantation is more fruitful.
Sales prospecting is one aspect of marketing and sales, with before and after functions that are equally important for successfully spreading awareness of the product, kindling interest among the target audience, and attracting them to convert their expressed interest into actual sales. Devising a roadmap to keep acquiring new clients, nudging intrigued customers to move their cart to checkout, and retaining old ones, are all equally important in a prospecting plan. There is a border framework that works for any strategic sales prospecting plan that can be tweaked as per business requirements. Here are a few pointers from the framework that will help you garner more leads and conversions:
- Prepare Through Research
Knowing your product, market, and target audience will help close the sales loop. Missing any one of the three elements will be a recipe for disaster. Undoing mistakes prove to be more expensive than avoiding them. So, know all the details about your product, its problem-solving abilities, and the nearest competition to assess the target consumers.
- Engage Leads
Establish relationships with prospects to increase digital customer engagement and understand them better before pitching to them. Surveys, questionnaires, and exhibitions are platforms to actively listen to prospects and categorize them based on their possibility of conversion. In your survey, if the consumer says he is not interested in the product line, move the contact to cold. If he is interested in the product but has not heard about your brand, then pitch about your brand and then reiterate about the product.
- Map Your Performance
Measurable parameters help understand how much ground you have covered if the efforts are commensurate with results, and masking metrics that don’t project a true picture. Without quantitative analysis, qualitative results are lip service. Goals have to be achievable and efforts measurable to be permitted in the next ongoing prospecting plans.
Conclusion:
Realistic expectations and consistent result-oriented efforts will help turn difficult nays to yes, and yes to forever in every business. Ignoring old customers for new customers, or assuming that the target audience is an easy catch, are expensive mistakes. A sales prospect plan will cover a holistic approach based on these points.