Prospecting is a process of sorting and sifting through lists. The first day you prospect, you may have a large list with no significant facts known regarding individual members on that list. In time, after interaction, inquiries, calls, letters, appointments, follow-up, etc., you will have encountered and collected information that can help you separate the better and more qualified prospects on your list from the less known and more general prospects.
- It is key to try to understand and identify who your better prospects are over time.
- In general, the prospects with whom you have had the highest amount of interaction are most likely to be your better prospects.
- Therefore, when it comes to engaging in future follow-up, it is a good idea to sort through your follow-up list in order to determine “who-is-who” on the list.
- If you have a follow-up list for a particular month that has 60 listings, find out which ones you have met with before or are former buyers, etc. Put the most familiar names first.
- Have pertinent data that you collected from these prospects in the past at you fingertips so you can access it, if necessary. Are some of the prospects of a similar type? If so, filter those prospects by type prior to following up. If I talk to all of my “left hand” widget buyers at once, it helps me improve my focus as I work through the follow-up list.
If you only have a few names to follow-up with during a given month, sorting through your follow-up list may not seem very helpful. If that’s you, then try to apply these principles to your greater prospecting list. The more you can segment a list by subject and familiarity, the better your focus will be as you work through the list. The better your focus, the better your results will tend to be.
Originally posted 2009-05-26 03:39:04.
