Steps in Prospecting Customers

The steps in Prospecting are:

1. Formulating prospect definition.
2. Searching out potential accounts.
3. Qualifying prospects and determining probable requirements and.
4. Relating company products to each prospect's requirements.

1. Formulating Prospect Definition.

Prospective customers must have the willingness. The financial capacity, and the authority to buy. They must be available to the sales person. Sales persons only waste time in attending to sell to individuals who have neither need for the product nor money to pay for it. They waste time if they tried to sell to the wrong persons. It is important to ascertain which persons in each firm have the authority to buy. Although individuals may qualify as prospects in other respects they may be inaccesible to the sales person. For example, the president of a large corporation may need insurance and be willing and able to pay for it, but a particular sales person may have no way to make the contact.

Besides meeting the stated requirements, there are requirements unique to each company's customers. Starting with the data on the profitablity of present accounts, the characteristics typical of profitable accounts but not shared by unprofitabler accounts to be detected. These should be recognizable from information appearing in directories or lists. For example, prospects in many business and professions are readily identified from classified listings in telephone and city directories. The prospect definitions are the key charachteristics that identify profitable accounts are assembled into descriptions of the various classes of customers.

2.Searching Out Potential Accounts.

With the help of the prospect definitions, the sales person reaches different sources for the names of probable prospects, or "suspects" as they are called. Important sources of prospect information are directories of all kinds, news and notes in trade papers and business magazines, credit report, membership lists of chamber of commerce and trade and manufacturers association, lists purchased from list brokers, and records of service request: responses to company advertising, sales personnel of non - competing firms calling on the same general classes of trade, conventions and meetings, bankers and othe "control of influence", and the sales person's own observations. For example, sales people selling services find "out prospects among their acquaintances; members of their professional, religious and social organizations; and the referral of friends. Another source of prospects is the "endless chain" of satisfied customers.

3.Qualifying Prospects And Determining Probabale Requirements

While information is assembled on each tentative prospect it is easier to estimate the probable requirements of each for the types of products sold by the company. Prospects with too small requirement to represent profitable business are rejected from further consideration additional information required to qualify certain prospects may be gathered by personnel visit of sales persons. These visits save time, as prospects are seperated non - prospects.

4.Relating Company Product To Each Prospects Requirements.

The final step in prospecting is to plan the strategy for approaching each prospect. It is usually possible to determine each prospect's probable needs from the information assembled. The sales person sellect those that seem most appropriate for a particular prospect from what he or she knows about the company's prodcuts, their uses and applications.

Now the sales person's presentation is tailored to fit the prospects. He should have clear idea about specific objections the prospect may raise and other obstacles to the sale. He should be ready to contact the prospect, by making an appointment, deciding how to open the presentation and determining how to persuade the prospect to become a customer.

Moses Isaac
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