Sales Prospecting - The Quickest Way to Find New Business - Part 1

When sales people are prospecting we very often overlook the easy solutions. Where ethically acceptable to do so, the quickest way to get new business appointments meetings is to contact the competition of your existing clients.

Example 1:

My business was recently emailed by a search engine optimization company. Unfortunately I have lost their email but It went something like this:

Dear Peter,

I am not sure if you would be interested in this but we recently worked with company A (competitor) where we optimized their web site to obtain a Google front page ranking for the search term 'sales training'.

I noticed that this term is relevant for your business and that it is one of the phrases that your site is currently trying to rank for.

As you are not yet on the front page of Google we wondered if you would be open to having a discussion about how we might help you promote your business, get more enquiries and make more profit.

Some of the above is artistic license on my part but conveys the general approach.

Did I allow him through my gatekeeper when he followed up?

You might be thinking I said yes there but the real answer is no.

He didn't need to because I emailed him back straight away and we began a dialogue.

Was he doing anything unethical?

No. No matter what he did there were always going to be ten companies listed on the front page of Google. It didn't matter if his company helped all ten to get there or not. Although they did have a policy of only working with two companies per search term.

So if you need new business never, ever overlook the competition of the people you already do business with. Only when ethical to do so. For more information on how exactly to approach new prospects subscribe to the free newsletter detailed below. Find part 2 of this series of articles here on EzineArticles.