Prospecting: I Know Where You Are Hiding

Remember playing the game hide-and-seek as a child? It was quite gratifying to find the person within the allotted time and then outsmart your friends by hiding where they would never find you. Well, in professional selling, you and your competitor are constantly engaged in a different kind of hide-and-seek. It's called prospecting—corporate hide-and-seek. Potential customers are out there, located in various geographical pockets throughout your territory. Success goes to the one who is most creative in finding and developing new customers, new markets.

Many sales experts and authors suggest that prospecting is the most important activity within the Sequential Model. Filling your sales funnel is the key to your economic survival. Your sales funnel is your inventory of potential customers. Through prospecting, customers enter your funnel as qualified, potential A or B accounts, each with its own sales cycle. Every customer has different viscosity, the time it takes to flow through the funnel and become an active account.

The emphasis on prospecting can vary among various selling fields but at the end of the day your success is determined by the quantity and quality of customers in your funnel. Constant prospecting and cultivation of your market, be it local or global, is the lifeblood of any business. All other activities center around your ability to keep the sales funnel full. However, a major oversight of many salespeople is that they ignore an emptying funnel. They become so focused and excited about developing new leads they fail to remain focused on their commitment to ongoing prospecting. It's not long before they realize their funnel is empty and panic sets in. This could be disastrous as it may be weeks or months before another potential customer works through the funnel. Be cognizant of your funnel inventory and continue to fill it with new opportunities, all while servicing and growing existing accounts.

As a sales entrepreneur, you must actively pursue new potential accounts to ensure you meet and exceed your sales and personal goals. With a customer attrition rate of approximately 15–30% and the constant threat of local and global competition, you can't afford to ignore the significant contribution prospecting makes to a business. Without a commitment to growth, how do you expect to meet or exceed those new quota targets assigned to you every year? You won't. Remember, employers reward results, not activities.

Speaking of growth, it's important that as a sales entrepreneur, you understand the difference between economic growth and real growth.