How to Identify the "Golden Prospect"

By: Blogger AMA

Published: Jan 24, 2019

Some prospects are better than others. In fact, some prospects are wonderful to deal with while others are a complete waste of your time. Your starting point in spending more time with better prospects is for you to define clearly the attributes of an excellent prospect.

One of the most valuable things you can do in your initial conversations with the prospect is to ask the kind of questions that enable you to determine your prospect's quality ranking on a scale from one to ten, with one being low and ten being high. Then your job is to find as many of them as possible.

There is one special quality possessed by an excellent prospect: he has a pressing need for exactly the product or service that you are selling. He has a problem for which your product or service is an excellent solution. Or he has an opportunity that your product or service enables him to take advantage of immediately. The more urgent the need or more pressing the demand, the lower will be the customer's price sensitivity or concern about the smaller details of the purchase. The more prospects you can find who have an obvious need for what you are selling, the more and faster sales you will make.

For example, a company that has a critical machine break down right in the middle of its busiest season is a prime prospect for the person and company who can sell and deliver this type of machine rapidly.

Not long ago, a young salesman selling construction materials lost a major order to a more aggressive supplier. But exactly when the supplies were required, in the middle of the construction job, the supplier's workers went on strike. The customer was desperate and called the young man to see if his company could deliver quickly. They could, and even through their prices were slightly higher, the young salesman gained a first-rate customer who not only bought large quantities from him but who opened doors for him to other people who also became customers.

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:
  1. Ask a new prospect lots of questions to find out how important your product or service can be to his or her life or business.
  2. Keep in touch with prospects who can most benefit from what you sell and continue reminding them that you want to do business with them.

And most importantly, never give up!