Sales Prospecting Made Simple

Sales prospecting is a task which most engineers tend to couple with cold calling.

Today I am going to suggest to you that in fact cold calling and sales prospecting are two very different things.

Cold calling is almost always a bad idea. Sales prospecting is almost always a very good idea.

Why is that?

Cold Calling v Sales Prospecting

Cold calling is a bad idea because it is very wasteful of your most precious resource viz your time. You don't know anything about the people you're calling.

Sales prospecting, done properly, is the process of pre-qualifying your prospects. Are the people whom you are about to call on - whether they are existing customers or not, whether they have been referred by a happy customer or not - are they people who have a burning problem for which you have the ideal solution?

If not, then you have no reason to make the call and you should be out there searching for someone with whom you could spend your pitch time more effectively.

But How to Separate the Wheat from the Chaff?

Your big problem, of course, is how do you find out which people have a problem without speaking to them first? Obviously, you can't; not 100%. However, it's much easier to qualify-out people who definitely don't meet your criteria.

After that initial process of elimination, sorting the sheep from the goats is a matter of skill, not luck. To sharpen up your skills in that area Click Here

Selling for Engineers: Secrets of Sucessful Closing Revealed

Secrets of YOUR Success

Selling for Engineers was written by Robert Seviour to describe his interesting idea that engineers and sales professionals share many mental characteristics.

The competent engineer, Robert says, is a man who sees a problem and itches to solve it, as a result of which he makes a device.

Similarly - in Robert's view - the top sales professional sees a customer's problem and itches to fix it, as a result of which he sells a solution.

Closing Techniques

In fact, if one takes Seviour's premise to its logical conclusion, the only real mindset difference between a first class engineer and a top salesman, is that the sales professional will "close".

Engineers typically do not close, because they don't see the need for "closing" skills, and therein, says this top European technical sales consultant, lies the reason that engineers usually need a little help in acquiring sound sales skills to help them "get the order".

So What Makes for a Skillful Close?

For many engineering professionals, the hard part of the job is actually asking for the order. We are comfortable talking to a potential customer about whatever the trouble might be, but then we expect that person to be able to see for themselves that we can take care of the problem for them.

Well, maybe they do see that, but usually they still need to be asked if they want our help. So... we both sit there, because the customer is waiting to be asked to place an order, and the engineer is waiting to be given an order.

What's the quick and easy way out of this impasse? If you want to get, absolutely free, 7 top closes which will bring your orders rolling in, just click here