Prospecting, deriving its origin from the act of mineral exploration, is an activity that seeks to determine whether something profitable can be gained from a prospect. By identifying the right prospects beforehand, prospecting maximizes the time you will spend in cold calling, ensures that you get high quality calls, and creates a huge impact on your return of investment – in other words, your time!

Most modern-day telesales professionals do not seem to realize the impact of prospecting on their overall sales results, that’s why it is ignored by so many. By disregarding this important activity, telesales professionals miss a lot of sales opportunities by turning the art of cold calling into a hit-and-miss affair.

Prospecting has evolved into a science that never fails to produce predictable yet excellent results. If you want to make the most out of your call list, you have to follow a system that is guaranteed to work effectively.

The aim of this chapter is to provide you with an effective prospecting system to help you explore for the “gold” in your calling lists!

(1) Be Prepared

Prospecting is a challenging activity and the degree of your success will hinge on your preparation. You should fully know and understand your products and services and be ready to answer questions about their applications and uses – as well as their features and benefits, too. You should also know your target market. Being acquainted with the type of people who will buy what you’re selling helps a lot in assessing your prospects. Knowing who your competitors are as well as what strengths and weaknesses they have, is also a valuable commodity for when you’re positioning yourself in front of your prospects.

(2) Schedule your Prospecting Sessions

Prospecting should be part of your daily routine. Set aside at least one hour each day to look for prospects with the right profile. Mark it down, as one of the top priorities of the day and you will resist the tendency to put off this important activity. To help you accomplish your daily prospecting sessions without fail, incorporate it into your time management system and then do it! Every day.

(3) Maximize your Calls

If your prospecting sessions last for only one hour each, maximize your time by making as many calls as possible. This also increases your chances of making more money in the long run, obviously. Before you start making the first call, eliminate all sources of distraction and set your desk phone to Do Not Disturb; prospecting requires your full and undivided attention. Turn the computer off, shut off the iPhone and all its cool Apps, and focus, focus, focus on identifying prospects who are receptive to your message, whilst disposing of the wrong ones quickly to enable you to move onto the viable conversation.

At a certain point, you will find your rhythm and each call you make will be better than the previous one.

(4) Be Brief and Concise

Make your calls as brief as possible. Give a short introduction, highlight the features and benefits of your product or service, and understand the customer’s needs so you can give a value proposition. All these things should be accomplished within 4-5 minutes, tops! The shorter your prospecting calls, the better. Why? Because you can make more calls within your prospecting hour, obviously. Be concise and to the point and talk with efficiency. Your prospects will actually prefer it that way, too!

Remember what the objective of your prospecting call is. What are you looking to accomplish? The green light to send some information through via email, or snail mail? A day and a time to call them back for a more in depth chat, perhaps after they have checked out your website? Or maybe you’re setting face-to-face appointments to go on over to their place of business and pitch them the good, old-fashioned way!

(5) Prepare a List

We went over this a little in the last chapter. Calling data, more usually described in this rock n roll business were in as ‘Leads’, are the lifeblood of every sales professionals prospecting sessions. Look to prepare a list of names or companies that would last for about a month at any one time. This way you do this little task only once every four weeks or so, meaning you can focus on the more important things – like prospecting and selling!

Having a list like this helps you organize your prospecting sessions and keeps you focused in meeting your goals. You can get lists from the internet, list brokers, or from a local business publication. Such lists are basically free, but you’ll no doubt have to spend a great deal of time weeding out the names that are not worth your time – or, get someone else to do it for you! Start building your own cold call list database if you want to stay ahead of the competition., and update it as and when you can – but, always on a regular basis.

(6) Prospecting During Off-Peak Hours

Sometimes things don’t go very well with conventional prospecting times so try to improvise by calling during off-peak hours. Decision makers, especially the workaholic types, usually work during off-peak hours. They don’t expect calls between 8:00 am and 9:00 am, between 12noon and 1:00 pm, and between 5:00 pm and 6:30 pm, so when you call within these times be prepared to talk when decision makers answer the phone – their secretaries and assistant probably wont even be in the office at these times.

Prospecting during off-peak hours can be a supplemental effort to your normal prospecting time or you can switch your entire prospecting time to off-peak hours, whichever is effective. I’ve done both in my career and they have served me both well – although I admit, I did become more of a lover of the Off-Peak prospect calling missions – just enjoyed catching the ‘big boss’ off guard! You can also vary the time of your calls if you can’t reach certain prospects at a particular time. If you fail to connect to the prospect after several attempts at a particular time, try calling on other days or on any other time during the day.

(7) Be organized

As I mentioned earlier, having a list serves as a guide that helps you keep organized in your prospecting sessions, but you need a sophisticated tool if you want to keep track of all of your prospects. Aside from maintaining accurate records, an good Customer Relationship Management (CRM – eg. SalesForce.com) System allows you to schedule a follow-up as far ahead as several years after making a call even!

You might encounter prospects that still have existing contracts, for example, but if they tell you to call them as soon as their contract expires then schedule a follow-up at the right time. The advantages of using a system like this are too many to list here. Check one out – there are tons of options. I’ve listed a few good ones in the Online Resources section of this eBook.

(8) Visualize

One powerful technique that will do wonders for your prospecting is the use of visualization. Before you start your prospecting session, visualize everything that is going to take place. Visualize every detail of your call and how it will unfold. You open your call with your attention-grabbing opening statement, or introduction and your prospect excitedly listens to your proposition. The final scene shows you scheduling the appointment, or confirming an important email address. Don’t be surprised if your prospecting calls turn out exactly as you have envisioned them – the power of a positive mind should NEVER be underestimated.

Visualization also helps you relax. It clears your mind, heightens your concentration, eliminates negative thoughts and helps you think positively. All these are benefits of visualization and they equip you to withstand any anxiety or negativity that you’ll encounter on your prospecting calls. Another benefit of visualization is that it builds up your confidence. Your ability to get the prospect’s nod on your offering will be enhanced by your confidence. Prospects are likely to buy from someone who exudes a lot of confidence.

It’s like an All-Star basketball player seeing the winning basket drop through the hoop before they even take the shot. They know it. They FEEL it. Get onto YouTube and search for the 3-Point Shootout from the 1988 NBA All-Star weekend. Larry Bird needs the final shot to drop to win the title. He releases the ball and whilst its still on its way towards the hoop, he is already on his way to the center of the court to collect his prize. Seriously watch it… THAT is visualization!

(9) Never, EVER Quit!

Prospecting is like a game. You win some, you lose some. You will also have your own share of rejections, but don’t let that discourage you. Consider it as a lesson to be learned and just keep going. Never let go of a prospect too easily. Most prospects will throw objections your way, or say ‘no’ in other ways at least a few times, before they say ‘yes’. So don’t quit. Quitting will only leave you with the bitter aftertaste of knowing that you could have won the game had you stayed on and kept playing.

Your persistence will impress on the minds of your prospects and they will start the wonder about the full value of your product or service – eventually, you’ll win them over.

This is a complete, FREE chapter from the upcoming release of “Telesales Magic – Proven Tips, Tactics and Techniques to Help You Sell More on the Phone!”, the brand new eBook/AudioBook companion course by 20-year telesales veteran, Chris C. Ducker which is due for release this coming Friday 18th February, 2011.

This is a guess post by Paul Archer

Be careful of speaker phones or hands-free mobile phones as they might be giving your customer the wrong message.

This afternoon I was sitting in Starbucks enjoying a double espresso and the guy on the next table was using his mobile phone with his speaker enabled. I appreciate that mobile phones are supposed to give us all radiation poisoning if we press them to our ear, but the information he was giving his customer was terribly public. He didn’t seem to mind bless him, but I bet the customers did, if they knew.

Worse than that are conference facilities built into many landline phones. It might be more convenient for you to use this feature when contacting customers but again the same negative message is being given to your customer. Who else might be listening comes to mind. Besides speaker phones sound like you’re in a public lavatory.

A final phone tip for you. If you find yourself working from home and need to make prospecting or client based calls and the background noise just doesn’t work for you. Children making a noise, dogs barking and such…then download a sound file from the internet which mirrors a busy office noise and play it on your computer.

I use one and although my customers probably don’t mind where I am, the comforting office sound made me feel more relaxed and I perform better on the phone as a result. Try it – it works.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Do you dive in head first into business speak with customers or coachees? Here’s a simple reminder for us all.

I hear suit telephone sales are up so are fountain pen sales. It’s all the extra business meetings we’re having. British Airways is even offering free business class flights to anywhere in the world to small business owners looking to export abroad.

It seems that in these tough times, we’re all out drumming up business with face to face meetings. And that’s a good thing. It’s heightened our awareness to go back to the basics of selling.

And with the pressure on we’re getting straight down to business talk and this couldn’t be more dangerous. This is a big mistake when you’ve never met someone before. No, we ought to be holding back on business talk even in these pressured times and become even more interested in them, become curious about them as a person. People like to do business with people they both like and trust. OK you may not be fantastic buddies but you like and respect each other and only then will business result.

Do you know when you are with a friend, you get along really well and you become like them, you match their personality, their mood, their pace, their body language, eye contact…everything. But when you are with someone who wouldn’t be a great friend and is not like you, naturally you are not going to become like them are you?

In telephone sales though, you need to become a little bit like them so as to build trust and some likeness. For example, anyone who knows me can see that I’m quite bubbly and excitable and energetic, I like to be positive. My wife thinks I’m quite loud!

So if  I meet someone who is the opposite then I need to purposely become like their personality a little. I need to slow down, monotone my voice a little, speak like them, give them the same amount of eye contact as they give me.

I call it personality matching and it works. That way we will build a rapport, begin to trust each other and get on. Then we can start talking about business.

Mirror mirror on the wall…who is the fairest of them all? Not you, but the person you’re talking with, so let’s spend some of our attention on them and begin to match their personality before diving head first into business speak.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

On the train one spring morning to London I met three very interesting ladies who made me think about financial advisers or, in fact,
any phone sales people who want to differentiate themselves from their competition, so let me hare with you why.

These ladies are from Indonesia and live and work in Gloucester. They were dressed immaculately and were chatting and being excited about their trip to London. Being the day before Easter, the train was packed with day trippers looking forward to a day in
London and I expected these ladies to bedoing the same.

“No, we.re going to the Embassy to vote forour President”.
“Oh” I looked surprised.
“Yes”, the lady opposite me explained. “We could vote by post but we prefer to make a day of it, do some shopping, attend a show,
and enjoy each others company as well as vote”.

And that got me thinking about financial advisers and their competition. You see competition for financial advisers is not other
financial advisers, it’s the internet. But some see it as competition, some don’t. Those that fear the internet and see their products that they sell as a commodity.

And that’s dangerous. The internet sells commodities really well and will be more and more effective at this over the next few years.
If you see yourself as a phone sales person of a commodity such as a life assurance, health insurance, pensions and such then you are
doomed. Doomed to be discarded in favour of the internet that’ll sell this much better than you, and cheaper too.

Now my ladies on the train could have voted by post but preferred to enjoy the attractions of London – shopping, seeing a show.
In the same way a client meeting a financial adviser will enjoy what they have to offer. Professional advice, consultation, listening to
their goals and problems and then advisingthem from a plethora of products which ones would help them achieve their goals or solve
their problems.

Many people will prefer to buy these products quickly and painlessly on the internet, but equally many will prefer the longer advice
version.

So be crystal clear as to what you sell. Commodities or advice. And then ensure your clients know exactly how you work right
upfront to overcome the internet objection that will rear its ugly head later. And remember you.re in business to understand
your clients first and foremost. Your job is not to sell products but to understand your client.s position, so invest in your skills this
year and next to do this even better that you are right now.

Maybe the internet can give advice in the future but it will not be automated, this can’t be one. This is what will happen in the future.
Your hologram will be transported to the client via the internet, saving you physically travelling to them.

The technology is there right now to do this,but it costs a small fortune. The internet can transport holograms – pop stars and
politicians are doing it now. Robbie Williams was beamed to a concert recently, Prince Charles was beamed to a conference last
year, and CEOs of major corporations are using this technology to hold important summits without leaving their homes.

But at the moment it’s too expensive for everyone.

In 5 years time we’ll all be using the same technology but it will still be you that is giving the financial advice the client needs who
prefers to get from you rather than buying the commodity over the internet.

So beware that you don’t slip into commodity selling.

And my Indonesian ladies, they were really looking forward to their mini break in London. Poor me – I was on business.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

Have you ever given your negative emotions away with your body language and wish you had stayed in control? Then you.ll be aware of your leakage. Read on to see how you can make this body language principle work well for you in selling and coaching.

Cold yet bright, London can be a great city to do business in. But eventually we all like to get home. Except I.d missed my train by a whisker. Now trains run from Paddington Station to Cheltenham every two hours so I had a long wait.

So I settled down to a long strong coffee at Starbucks and began to watch people. I love watching people, recognizing their body language, guessing what they.re thinking, don.t you just love that pastime.

In walked this young chap and he began to queue looking at the various coffees and goodies he could buy when he caught sight of the extremely good looking girl sitting in the corner sipping her latte.

What I saw was amazing – not the girl but the boy.s body language which reacted dramatically as a summer storm. His eyes widened, a big smile appeared and his stomach shrank as be pulled his stomach in and his chest out. His body language showed leakage.

I call it leakage when someone suddenly changes their body language for a reason – it really is quite spectacular when it happens and can be very useful in selling and coaching.

It.s useful to know about leakage for yourself and for your clients. Observing your client.s leakage is vital if you want to look for non verbal buying signals, which I always believe are the best ones. The body never lies but people have been known to tell them instead. Use “test” closing to check for body language leakage. “How does that sound?” or “What do you think so far?” Watch them carefully for those sudden changes. Focus on the face as that.s where we can.t hide our feelings.

Calibrate what normal looks like for them and compare with the leaked facial expressions and you can tell instantly whether they.re happy or not, or want to buy from you or not. Be aware of your own leakage as well. When you.re presenting to clients and you.re posed a tricky question, don.t give away your position by leaking your body language. Ask someone what happens to you when you are put under some pressure and learn to mask this the next time it happens. I.ve often seen this with people who are presenting in public and get a difficult moment, such as a question or their remote breaks down or they forget what to say next.

Leakage observation can also help you if you want to see how someone reacts to you. Now this chap in Starbucks would have been better off if he kept his eye on the pretty girl as her body language leaked as well. She couldn.t keep her eyes off him and her leakage was striking. If only he.d read my article and glanced at her – they might have had a great future together. But instead he left with his skinny latte in a rather rushed manner. The innocence of youth or is it body language naivety.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

Welcome to the most widespread objection today and its not price.

Apparently they’re starring at Glastonbury this summer. I’m talking about Status Quo the rock band whom my 71 year old father is going to see in concert later this month. That shows you how long they’ve been around.

But the status quo have recently become quite a problem for sales people and I’m no longer talking about the band – I’m referring to lethargy or not taking any action.

Apart from the Internet, it’s the status quo that is today.s newest and biggest competitor. Customers are inclined to take no action unless we allow them to see the danger of this course and maybe the cost of doing nothing.

This extra competition that we’re now up against, doesn’t allow us to use our traditional objection handling strategies as we’re not having to compare our product or service with the competitors or justify its value. Instead we have to make sure we let our customer see the problems of not taking our advice.

And we must weave this into our sales patter.

This is particularly important for financial services salespeople who sell an invisible product. There’s an old adage that life assurance is sold and never bought and this is even more prevalent today. Make your customer aware of the dangers of the status quo; ask them what might happen if they don’t protect themselves in the event of their partner’s death, the issues this might bring up in their lives.

Questions, questions, questions – that’ll help them see the perils on inaction.

Let them explore in their mind the consequences of doing nothing and treat the status quo as just another competitor that you need to avoid during your selling process.

And Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt from Status Quo can keep rocking all over the world until they’re ready to pick up their pension. I do believe Francis is 60 next birthday. Fantastic.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer

A few readers wrote to me just before Christmas asking for help. Both were struggling to get in front of new prospects to sell their services and products. Both had excellent propositions but found call reluctance to be as problem and prospects unwillingness to speak with them preferring to “weather the storm” and batten down the hatches.

Have you experienced this as well?

I think we all have to some degree and unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’ll recognise that we are going through a downturn. Now I don’t sign up for the “business is better that it’s ever been, I’m busier than ever, what recession?” brigade; these people seem to be just massaging their egos when they print this stuff.

The plain fact is – we have to prospect more than ever before. Working harder and smarter at getting to speak with new customers, will help us succeed in this economy.

I think we’ve all got the phone sales skills but maybe haven’t had to use them so much over the last five to six years since there’s been plenty of business to go around.

So now’s the time to smarten up our prospecting tools, or client acquisition tools as this is now known as.

Here are some quick phone sales tips to help you.

• Examine your product and service and be crystal clear as to what problem it solves. Problems in recessions are all about saving costs and increasing revenue, getting invoices paid on time, preventing suppliers going bust and such like. Try to think like your customers and be totally clear as to what problems your product solves

• What is your customer segment? Be as precise as you can as to which type of customer has the problems that your product or service solves and then focus on these customers.

• Decide on your marketing to reach these customers. There are many routes to market that you can choose but the quickest and most decisive is still telephoning them to make an appointment to see them.

• Get over any phone sales call reluctance.

• Dedicate specific blocks of time in your diary to make calls to prospects.

• Aim simply for a face to face appointment nothing else. Don’t get into conversations, send out literature etc. These never work, although we think the do at the time, are easy to do, quite gratifying but divert your attention to the job of making appointments.

• Be up front with your prospect on the phone about the problem that your product solves and ask for an appointment.

• Don’t ask “if it’s convenient to call” you’ll lose sales if you do this. Instead say “if it’s convenient to speak right now I’d like to…” Subtle difference. And if you feel brave enough, don’t even ask, just launch into your opening.

• Learn how to politely persevere on objections twice and then leave the prospect alone. Keep coming back to the objective of asking for an appointment.

• Sticky tape the phone to your wrist and don’t put it down. Use the 60 second rule. This ensures you get onto the next call within 60 seconds, no longer.

• Spend a maximum of 60 minutes making appointment calls.

• Reward yourself when you.re done as making appointments is stressful, there’s no way around it. Yes alpha male macho types will tell you they enjoy it but you look at the burnout rate of call centre direct sales people.

It’s hard, full of rejection and people saying no, occasional rudeness and extremely easy to put off to-do another job.

We all need more prospects right now and making appointments via phone is the quickest and most effective method of doing so. Dig out all those customers that have connections to your company, old names and phone numbers. Those people who you never had the time to contact. Maybe buy some lists or leads and start to make those calls with the specific intention of making an appointment.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

Here’s a tale that many parents will relate to and gives some thought to help next phone sales meeting.

It was rush hour and I was travelling on a packed intercity train and in the opposite seat was a young couple with a toddler who was causing all sorts of commotion. The poor young couple were very embarrassed. The carriage was stony quiet except for the toddler and everyone was staring at the young couple.

Along came the conductor to check tickets and to the rescue she came. She soon realised how uncomfortable the couple were so offered to head back to the buffet car where they had some special toddler packs containing colouring pencils and picture books.

The couple were even more self-conscious being asked a question until the elderly chap next to me said “Oh can I have one as well please?” He laughed followed by everyone else and the icy tension quickly thawed.

He had rescued the situation with some quick thinking and humour.

This made me think about phone sales meetings and the need to have one or two questions up your sleeve as rescue questions. When the situation gets tricky – maybe your customer has said something that completely throws you or your laptop crashes right in the middle of the presentation – most of us can’t think quickly enough to come out with an appropriate response so have one preprepared.

It’s here that you can use your rescue question to get you out of the tricky mess.

Here are a few ideas:

“That’s a good point – can we park that and come back later”

“Tell me about your year so far”

“What major changes are you implementing this year?”

So memorise some rescue questions just in case – you never know when they’ll come in handy.

And the toddler? Sure enough the toddler pack did the trick but only for ten minutes. I felt very sorry for the couple but reached for a 21st century gadget to get me out of bother – my iPod and drowned out the noise.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com

This is a guest post by Paul Archer.

On holiday in France last year we spent many an evening in the local cafes sucking up the atmosphere enjoying everything that is France. Next to us on one evening was a charming British couple and, as you do, we got chatting. The chap talked about life back at home and mentioned excitedly about coaching his local mini rugby team.

Now that’s exactly what I do on a Sunday morning so I began to tell him, with equal enthusiasm, all about my coaching. I told him all about it, never stopped, talked over him and dominated the conversation.

That’s not empathy and rapport building…I blew it.

They didn’t stay in the café very long making their excuses and disappeared into the night. Afterwards I realized what I’d done and knew that if I’d listened to him and allowed him to talk openly about his hobby…we would have got on better. Instead I just got talking about the same subject.

It’s easy to do this when the other person mentions something that you can say a lot about as well. Sometimes we all fall into this trap. I know, I did.

This is useful in sales, coaching and any communication situation where you need rapport and a trust before you can do your job.

Do people a favour and just let them talk.

Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visit www.archertraining.co.uk or his sales  blog at www.paularcher.com