Prospecting Training

Prospecting Training

The most important aspect of any sales prospecting training class is for the salespeople to learn to develop strong relationships with prospects so that they can potentially extend their influence for future sales offers. Without cultivating a trusting relationship, it becomes nearly impossible for any sales person to comprehend the prospect's personal pains, their needs or what they will stand to benefit from utilizing the offered product. However, without a great level of rapport with your prospects, you will not be able to convert those prospects into paying clients. Sales Prospecting should form the bedrock of any seasoned sales career. Here are some essential concepts to keep in mind when venturing into a new sales prospecting environment:

Create a legendary prospecting program. Any professional sales prospecting instructor worth his salt will tell you that the single most important factor in the development of a profitable client pipeline is a great prospecting program. Your ability to deliver a comprehensive and actionable prospecting training experience will determine whether or not you are successful in your career. For those who have had significant success as a professional salesperson, many of the best practices for generating a quality prospecting program have been adopted from their more illustrious sources. Prospecting programs that have worked for these individuals can provide a blueprint for your own successful pipeline.

Continually evaluate your prospecting program. Your sales capability can be improved by constantly evaluating your current process and creating new processes for your business. Sales prospects are not easy to identify and many will become involved with your enterprise selling program before you are able to close a sale. If you are consistently assessing your prospecting efforts, you will be in a better position to ensure that you are meeting your sales results goals.

Avoid Negative Opinions. Negative opinions about yourself, your skills or your approach are a major obstacle to developing a strong prospecting program. These negative comments can lead to rejection, which is one of the most common reasons why salespeople fail. You need to develop a strategy for handling negative feedback and you need to monitor how often this occurs. The ultimate goal of salespeople is to close a sale, therefore it is critical that negative comments are dealt with accordingly.

Establish a Sales Funnel. Once you have developed a solid prospecting plan and completed training, you must establish a system to help you capture the names and other identifying information of the best prospects. Most seasoned salespeople utilize what is called automated sales funnel, which is essentially a list of leads that have been pre-determined and segmented to reflect the specific needs of each prospect. Once you have established sales funnel for your enterprise selling endeavors, you can fine tune your sales training efforts to better identify the best prospects.

Consultative Sales Prospects. When you are trying to develop a strong sales training program, there is one critical element you must have access to: the person's experience, knowledge and perspective on the matter at hand. Successful sales professionals have no problem creating a consultation process that will allow them to get in front of their prospects and develop a relationship based on mutual trust. This type of consultative sales prospecting is a powerful way to develop a clientele that is interested in the products, services and the overall enterprise. Successfully applying this type of sales prospecting will go a long way to ensuring your success.

Train your reps. Finally, once you have a great sales prospecting training program in place, your next step is to train your reps. Your reps need to know what is expected of them and how often they should be meeting with the sales team. A great sales prospecting training program will stress the urgency of these training goals and help your reps get in the habit of developing trust with the senior management as well as the sales team.

Implement your prospecting ideas. Now that you have your prospecting ideas in place, you need to test them. The best way to do this is to test each idea out on the leads you have identified as having the most potential for joining the company. If they work out, fine, if they don't, you can always pull the rug out from under them. Remember, the key to generating new sales team members is to never lose sight of the fact that the most successful sales people are born into the company, not made it.