Speed prospecting

Speed prospecting is much like speed dating. It's fast, it's effective and as time is a prized commodity it's worth a look at. So tell me, are you practising it?

Ok let me explain. Let's establish this one thing – we're living in a digital era and when it comes to selling, you'd have to be a dumb wit if you weren't interested in social media to enable your sales. Am I right or am I right?! Anyway, this is where speed prospecting through social media comes into its own.

I call this social selling and I can't fluff this topic up any longer – sorry to offend!

So ask yourself are you ready to lead, follow or get left behind?

If it's the first, stay tuned. You know my rule – I only work with smart winners!

From my research and analysis of thousands of prospecting calls, I’ve found that the three biggest factors that super-charge your chances of getting into a busy prospect’s office are the:

Prospect's profile (who to call)
Triggers events (when to call)
Relationships (how to use your relationships to get in by referral)

Now I'm not sure about you but if I could take only one of these factors to a desert island I'd take relationships. BTW I'd have my laptop, phone and an Internet connection on the desert island, along with my man servant! 😉

Why? Well the answer is obvious (forget the man servant for a mo). When it comes to selling, relationships are the biggest factor of all. They equate to social capital and nothing beats this AND the fact that someone wants to help you. You can do the most bang up job of positioning your company and profiling your market down to the exact companies and individuals that should want to buy your product or service, but if those prospects don’t know you, or know someone who knows you, or can vouch for you, they don’t trust you. And when they don’t trust you you're in a pickle! The relationship will take months and years to nurture and so will your sales. Bummer!

So what's the solution? Easy – it's time to leverage off your connections. And, the good news is that in the digital era this is a synch!

[box]Studies show that the average conversion rate on a website shoots from 7% up to 71% when you're recommended via a social network. TWEET THIS[/box]

The first thing you can do is to prioritize and categorize your prospects in a different way. Instead of doing a pure profiling and target market exercise that includes what size companies (employees and turnover), what sectors, what locations etc. you need to refine things.

You need to review your prospect list with a much broader definition of target companies and then go straight to an overlay of your social graph – aka who do you know and who do they know. You can use many social tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to do this and use all of the insight gained from them to develop further rapport when you're speaking to them.

You then need to make your prioritized prospect companies only the ones you can get into via referral or with some kind of common link.

Whilst it may seem awkward and somewhat ill-defined at first this is the fastest way to build your sales pipeline, convert your prospects into long-term clients and ultimately sell.

Now I want to hear from you…

Tell me your story. Are you using social media to prioritize your prospect list and to sell? If so, please share your stories and experience here and let us know what's working and what's not.

Thanks for participating!

With love and gratitude – as always,

P.S.

Finally, if you know someone who'd LOVE the insight from this post, please send them a link. You’ll find solo entrepreneurs, consultants and yes, even sales and marketing managers and directors from 8-figure corporations who'll be interested to hear about this.