Not everyone is a prospect. Just because they fit your target profile doesn’t mean you should automatically consider them a prospect and invest your time and energy in them.
How real an opportunity is it? Have you invested enough time upfront to ask sufficient, effective questions that enable both you and the prospect to assess whether it makes sense to talk further? Or once you have a prospect who shows some interest do you jump on the opportunity to demonstrate your credibility and give away free consulting?
I met a business owner recently who believed that everyone who fit his target profile was a real prospect for his company, if only he could show them what his company could do for them. He spent a lot of time trying to get in front of anyone who fit that profile and once he did trying to convince them that working with him was the right choice. What he couldn’t understand was why more of them weren’t interested and those that seemed keen vanished before they turned into a sale.
There is a lot wrong with this approach, too much to cover in one article, but the main point is that he was failing to recognise that not everyone is a prospect and that he was wasting a lot of time and effort on people who were never going to buy.
If he had only invested more time upfront in finding out whether they were a real prospect he could have then used his time more efficiently, focusing only on prospects that were REAL.
Know what your criteria are for assessing how real a prospect is, ask the right questions to determine that and stick to your process. Don’t deviate just because a prospect seems very keen to push the process forward. If they don’t fit your criteria, then move on to find others who are real opportunities.
REAL prospects:
- Are willing to engage in a meaningful conversation with you when you initially contact them. You don’t need to chase them
- Have an unsolved problem (or unattained goal) for which your product or service is well suited – not just interest or curiosity about what you do
- Are willing to share the information required to determine if your product or service represents a truly good fit in relation to their expectations
- Are willing to take action in a reasonable period of time
- Have expressed the desire to work with you and your company (rather than simply inviting you to submit a quote or proposal).
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