Prospecting using the Prospect Factory system I work with, requires some advanced preparation or groundwork. This includes spending some time thinking about the products and services you sell in order to determine two important things.
- Who buys your products and services? (In some cases the “buyer” may be replaced with a person or entity that facilitates the buying of your products and services. This could be distributors, sales reps, brokers, etc.)
- Where are those buyers located? (i.e. Literally, what geographical location?)
Once you know what kind of person (or, business) buys (or, facilitates the buying of ) the types of products you sell and where they are located, you can then create a general description of your typical buyer.
Here are two sample general descriptions:
“All single-bore widget manufacturers located in the States of Washington, Missouri, Ohio, Florida and Maine transacting between $10 and $25 million in sales per year.”
“Any business or organization operating within a 75 mile radius of XYZ radio station’s transmitters that transactsover $500,000 per year in sales that may ever have an interest in radio advertising.”
The next part of groundwork is to take your buyer descprption and apply it to a variety of primary sources (i.e. published lists, directories, internet sources, etc.) for the purpose of identifying potential prospects. In doing so, your goal is to put together a well thought out list that includes the names and contact information to many, ideally thousands, of prospects.
It’s notable from the very first step that this approach is not “relationship based.” The prospect list created as a result of this process is a top-down catalog of your market as a whole (or, a segment of it). There is no prerequisite that you know or “know someone who knows” any prospect prior to his or her name being addded to your list. Instead, you attempt to collect a broad array of prospects whose most significant common link is only how well they match your buyer description.
Formulating a Buyer Description and Creating a Prospect List
Prospecting using the Prospect Factory system I work with, requires some advanced preparation or groundwork. This includes spending some time thinking about the products and services you sell in order to determine two important things.
Once you know what kind of person (or, business) buys (or, facilitates the buying of ) the types of products you sell and where they are located, you can then create a general description of your typical buyer.
Here are two sample general descriptions:
The next part of groundwork is to take your buyer descprption and apply it to a variety of primary sources (i.e. published lists, directories, internet sources, etc.) for the purpose of identifying potential prospects. In doing so, your goal is to put together a well thought out list that includes the names and contact information to many, ideally thousands, of prospects.
It’s notable from the very first step that this approach is not “relationship based.” The prospect list created as a result of this process is a top-down catalog of your market as a whole (or, a segment of it). There is no prerequisite that you know or “know someone who knows” any prospect prior to his or her name being addded to your list. Instead, you attempt to collect a broad array of prospects whose most significant common link is only how well they match your buyer description.