How to find new prospects
A guide on how to find the best prospects for your business
Your success as a salesman all depends on finding the best prospects
But how to do it? Here’s a guide with examples about where to start
Good relations lead to the most suitable prospects regarding selling a service or product from your company. The whole process – hopefully leading to a sale – starts with you making the first contact.
Instead of waiting for your network to grow, you should be proactive taking those steps that will lead you to success. Get behind the steering wheel right now and learn how to prospect like a pro.
Here are strategies that will help improve your prospecting game:
Focus on building relations and confidence
Successful prospecting is not about taking contact to several – more or less – random people and hoping it pays off. It’s all about focusing on finding the most suitable candidates. The next step will be building a strong connection to the prospect.
It will take patience to gain confidence from possible prospects. Imagine if you were in your customers shoes – what would be the best approach from the sales person? Building a strong connection is the key to selling. People buy from people they like – it’s that simple.
5 tips to build a deep connection with any prospect.
But let’s get back to where to find your prospects in the first place.
Finding prospects through LinkedIn
The social media is a powerful tool when you want to search for prospects. LinkedIn is made for business people. That’s why you should take your time to get to know how this site really works.
You get access to a lot of data on LinkedIn. “Spying” on competing companies can be a quick path to valuable information. Look at the followers of the company’s profile. Who is interacting with posted content? The clients and customers of your competitors just might be prospects for your business too.
One look at a profile will lead you to other interesting profiles in the “People also viewed” sidebar.
Now you’re getting started using LinkedIn as a source to build your portfolio of prospects.
Click here or on the image to read more about using LinkedIn.
There are of course other, great ways to find new prospects easily.
4 great ways to find new, quality prospects
Prospects can be found anywhere – online and offline
If you’re open to finding prospects anytime and anywhere – you will stand much better chances in succeeding. The hunt for customers is not a 9 to 5 job.
Meeting people in real life instead of online will give you a lot of advantages. It’s much easier to quickly build a strong connection when meeting face to face. Opening conversations with people on an everyday basis will lead you to a lot of knowledge that could be very useful. Be open about your working position and ask questions that will get the talk going. “What is your plan?” is always a solid opener.
Using Meetup.com
Meetup.com gives you the opportunity of meeting people in the same business as you or with similar interests. Many meetings in real life are set up by users of this site.
If you are interested in developing e.g. your WordPress skills, you can find people on Meetup with the same desire. This will lead to a lot of interesting connections – which will increase your network and quiet possible lead you to suitable prospects.
More about using Meetup for sales prospecting.
Ask Quora, not Google
When you turn to Quora to get the answers you need instead of asking Google, you will get an up to date answer from a person willing to help you out for free.
Quora is an interesting online spot for interacting about topics of any kind. Asking questions and answering other users’ questions will result in connections that will once again increase your network.
A possible question to ask later on could be “Do you know anybody that could be interesting to get in touch with regarding a cooperation?” And this is where the pay off could be prospects that will lead to sales.
The number 1 social media – Facebook
Using Facebook searching for prospects can’t be underrated. Everything you search for can most likely be found here. Get into the groups you may have an interest in – anything related to your business. Here you’ll find people that can both lead you to your next prospect – and of course be your next sales prospect themselves.
Creativity pays off. Doing what the others do will not make you stand out as an interesting person. Take part in group dialogues and mingle in with relevant contributions.
Once again – take a close look at competing business sites. Here’s a whole bunch of interesting stuff served and ready for you to investigate.
Ask yourself: What can you do better than the competing company? It should be very useful to know for the followers of these pages or groups.
Search for every word related to your company. The amount of results could very well surprise you.
More about the prospect hunting game on Facebook.
Conclusion – becoming a prospecting monster
The chase for prospects is on – and you’re behind the wheel. Don’t expect anyone apart from you to do the job. You’ll have to be dedicated and focused on the task.
Prospects can be anyone you meet anywhere. If your mind is always set on the possibility that the next person you meet – online or offline – can either lead you to suitable prospects or actually be a prospect, you’re much more likely to succeed.
There’s lots of easy ways to search online, but you’ll have to find the best strategies in your business case yourself. Learning by doing and by example will make you go far. Once the first couple of golden prospects are found, the next ones will come by easier.
The climb to success is filled with mistakes. If you learn from your mistakes – and don’t repeat them – they are in fact very helpful to bump in to.
Good luck and get prospecting!