Introduction to the book Prospect Factory
Copyright 2004 by Ted Stevenot

The Importance of Prospecting

Finding new and potential customers or “prospecting” is one of the most important and yet most difficult tasks a sales or self-employed person must do to achieve success. Further, there is no such thing as a successful salesperson who has not somehow solved the problem of prospecting.

Many people who have quit sales or had to give up a business they started were good, hard-working people with fine products and services to sell. All wanted to succeed, but ultimately did not. In the majority of cases, the reason for failure was because of an inability to find enough new, good-quality prospects.

Assuming you conduct yourself in a professional manner and that you sell a quality product or service that is reasonably priced, the challenge becomes letting enough qualified prospects know that you are available to serve them and giving those prospects a convenient means of finding you when they have an interest in buying what you sell.

When prospecting is carried out effectively, it invites qualified prospects to turn to you for help when they need it, and it provides a consistent and adequate supply of new buyers to your business. When enough prospects begin to turn to you for help, you will have taken an enormous step toward obtaining and sustaining long-term business success.

Conversely, running out of prospects is like running out of air. Even an established business can fail due to ineffective prospecting. A business must continually be able to generate enough prospects to (1) replace any business it loses through attrition and (2) to ensure that its overall sales volume continues to grow. Otherwise, the future of the business is in question.

Fifty Is Better Than Two

The better the prospecting is, the more successful the salesperson or business will tend to be. Having enough prospects is a like playing blackjack with a stack of 50 poker chips versus being down to your last two chips. If you have a stack of 50 chips, two chips don’t seem all that critical — but when you’re down to your last two chips, each one seems extremely critical.

When a salesperson does not have enough prospects:

• The pain from sales rejection is magnified.
• Too much is expected from poor prospects.
• Sales leads seem scarcer than they really are.
• It causes unreasonable fear of the loss of current business because of the high degree of difficulty in replacing it.
• It causes a tendency to oversell the few leads available, and it makes it all the more distressing when a potential sale is lost.

When a salesperson has many prospects:

• It greatly increases confidence and belief in the chance for success.
  It lowers overall sales pressure and reduces stress.
• It is easier to let go of weaker sales opportunities.
• It is easier to be objective and pursue the best interests of your prospects.
• It promotes future business growth, and it lays a foundation for promoting healthy long-term business.

In the simplest terms, when a salesperson has a generous number of prospects and loses or turns away a sale, the thought can be, “This prospect didn’t end up becoming a customer, but that’s OK because I know some of the other prospects on my long list of prospects will buy.” Versus thinking, “If this prospect doesn’t buy, then who will? This is one of my only sales leads. Where will I find more potential buyers? I just have to close this sale.”

The Purpose of This Book

This book describes how to set up and operate a prospecting system that produces large quantities of qualified sales leads. I developed this system during my fifteen-year career as a salesman and sales “prospector,” and I have used all of the techniques recommended in this book with repeated success.

The prospecting system described here takes a systematic approach to prospecting and networking. This approach is NOT based on where you grew up, what you look like, who you know, how charming your personality is or any of the other uncontrollable intangibles that are all too often used to characterize the foundations of good networking and good prospecting.

This book will help you see and understand that something as basic and simple as intelligent, hard work can be the major difference between succeeding and not succeeding in sales or small business. It will motivate you to work harder in your sales career and help you work more effectively. It will help you make telephone-prospecting calls without fear, and it will show you how to stop feeling bad when your approach is rejected by unreceptive or uninterested prospects.

This book will also help you gain control of your sales career. It will help improve the quality of your life as a salesperson, and it will show you how prospecting effectively will help you get what you want in your sales and business career — which is to be successful.