Lesson 5 Commentary: The Universe, Suspects, and Prospects
In this lesson you are introduced to prospecting. Prospecting is a process whereby you identify new firms or individuals that can benefit from the purchase of your product. Because salespeople are largely responsible for prospecting in their territory, this lesson is devoted to teaching you how to identify solid prospective customers within a target market, and how to use what you learn while prospecting to plan your calls. You will learn how to tell the difference between a suspect (lead), prospect, and qualified prospect. You will see why effective prospecting is critical to success in selling. Finally, you will gain first-hand experience at prospecting, and at prioritizing a list of prospects into a territory call strategy.
Lesson 5 Objectives
After completing this lesson, you should:
- Know which characteristics of members of your target market identify them as qualified prospects;
- Understand why carefully qualifying members of your target market is critical to your success as a salesperson;
- Understand how and where to obtain prospects;
- Have gained practice interviewing a prospective customer;
- Have prioritized a group of accounts according to their status as prospects for your products;
- Have established call objectives and a call strategy for a select group of qualified prospects.
Reading
Be sure to complete the reading assignments for Lesson 5 (listed in the Course Syllabus) before continuing with this lesson. You can also review a PowerPoint summary of the textbook chapter.