5 Biggest Prospecting Mistakes to Avoid
If you’re in sales, you know what prospecting is and understand the significant role it plays in the sales process. Sales managers hammer it home. You might even seek out those oft-browsed books on how-to-get-better-prospects in the ‘entrepreneur’ section at your local bookstore. The best thing about digging into sales prospecting is that you have a very long line of failures to learn from.
If you’re interested in doing your sales prospecting more effectively, here are the five biggest prospecting mistakes to avoid.
1. Purchasing Email Lists (or Prospect or Lead Lists, or Any Other Lists)
On the surface, purchasing email lists for prospecting seems legit. You’d think that buying access to all those names of potential customers would be a no-brainer. Except you may be wasting your money on an email list in 2018.
Email list don’t necessarily work. The same goes for any kind of listings that are being sold by countless list owners promising only the best leads. Save your money and risk it elsewhere in your venture.
2. Not Researching Your Market (or Audience or Competition)
Do you remember in school when you had a report that you maybe forgot to do because that last level of Zelda was more important, and you showed up the next day and what happened? That’s right, you looked foolish in front of the entire class, because you were unprepared.
Your business will fail like you failed that report if you don’t do your research. You need to understand your market, who your target audience is, and what they’re about. You also need to have a good handle on who your competition is. Otherwise, you’ll end up winging it and going down in some proverbial flames. Always do your research.
3. It’s Not About Your Business
As tricky as sales prospecting can be, you have to straddle that fine line between letting these prospects know who you are and what you can do for them. There’s an art to it almost. One that at the same time exposes the problem your prospect is having while explaining why your product or service is their solution.
All too often, salespeople begin to overtly push their company on prospects over offering a solution, which can turn even a fire-red prospect ice-cold in an instant. Remember that it’s not about your product, it’s about how your product can help them.
4.You Don’t Follow Up with Your Prospects
This mistake is one that goes all the way back to the beginning of sales-time, and is repeated to this day by countless salespeople, even the best ones. Sometimes it’s due to an already busy schedule, exhaustion, forgetfulness, or sheer laziness. Whatever the reasons, not following up with your prospects is costing your business money!
Prospecting is not an idle act. You have to constantly be getting out there and reaching out to your prospects as well as following up with them if you ever hope to get a sale. It will take multiple contacts with most prospects before you will see your conversion rate begin to rise, so the sooner you follow up with your prospects, the sooner you’ll start seeing those sales roll in. (Try using an AI-Powered CRM, like Spiro, that automatically reminds you who you should follow-up with, and when.)
5.Using Automated Marketing Tools
Aside from being canned, and in some cases costly, using some automated marketing tools to manage your email, social media, and other campaigns can backfire. The reason is, prospects are savvier than ever, and able to recognize an automated message when they see one and that much more likely to ignore or trash it.
Many of these available tools have either an initial cost or a monthly subscription fee. Some businesses believe that these automated tools are somehow more effective than, say, growing your lists organically. This is a false belief. When you tailor your emails or your social media posts, or any other content to your target audience (in this case, your prospects) they will be more receptive knowing it is coming from a real person.
In Conclusion
Sales is a universal language and like any other language, it is rife with miscommunication. This list by no means is definitive, as there are many more mistakes that can be made when it comes to prospecting, but this is as good a place as any to learn how to avoid five of the biggest prospecting mistakes known to sales forces around the world.
