Mr. Muhamed Muneer

You must have encountered this problem at one time or another in your firm: When confronted with the issue of lagging sales and unresponsive results, sales managers often place the blame on salespeople.  Your managers could not have found a worse place than the feet of his/her salespeople.

The perennial complaint is that the sales staff does not do enough prospecting. Actually, few companies are committed to a consistent, organised prospecting programme. Few are willing to do what's necessary to go through the tough job of developing them. The important point is this: Salespeople should not spend their time prospecting. The job of developing prospects belongs to the company, not the sales force.

The power of prospecting can be achieved by any company that follows a five-step process:

1.  Make the commitment to be a prospect-driven company:-  Prospecting usually is taken seriously only when sales are down, then forgotten once orders begin coming in. In the current economic scenario, the goal should be to be known as a prospecting company, one that focuses its total attention and resources on uncovering prospective customers. "Sales-driven" is a dinosaur-type term, more accurately describing a company that continues to be bound to the economy and thinking of the past decade or so.

It is most crucial that your company takes the move towards a prospect-driven company at next opportune moment. An economic downturn is the best time to begin. Discuss among your top management about this change in focus and train your sales managers for the change. Get appropriate literature, contract an outside consultant if needed.

2. Develop an accurate prospect file:-  Sales representatives and managers speak somewhat glibly about the "ideal customer." An analysis of the monthly sales reports might indicate something less than a perfect correlation between the ideal customer and those who actually place orders. A recent study by Deloitte & Touche points out how far off-base retailers are in assessing what shoppers want on such basic issues as everyday low prices, store location, merchandise selection, discounts, coupons, product quality and service.

The study indicates that shoppers rate service far less important than retailers do. Conversely, customers want everyday low prices, an issue that merchants often misinterpret. The reason for the near-universal business problem rests in a failure to engage in arduous and painfully slow task of identifying the proper prospects.

3. Build a bond:-  Contrary to popular opinion, the objective  of prospecting is not to make the sale. Sales-oriented people always want to short-circuit the prospecting process and go for the close. Too much time is spent on refining closing techniques. But the reason for a poor closing ratio has little to do with the ability of the sales rep and far more to do with a weak or non-existent prospect  development programme.

The key to effective prospecting is learning how the prospects thinks and what the prospect seeks to accomplish. The heart of effective prospecting is establishing a bond based on compatible ideas.

In the past, the bond may have been forged with free tickets to cricket matches or dinners at four-star hotels. Today, attempting to influence prospects with favours still exists, but that is fading fast and is being replaced with something more important: Ideas are the basis for an enduring bond between company and prospect.

4. Create conditions so that prospects want to become customers:-  In the retail arena, the failure of Spencer's and even Littlewoods seem to have taught the RPG group and the Tata group some lessons about the value of taking time to do accurate prospecting. Both the retail ventures flopped as they tried out various schemes bypassing prospecting. Both lost out in terms of customer focus or dichotomy of image.

The groups who have acquired these retails outlets set a good example of the fact that prospecting starts with building the bond, not making the sale. West End and Food World are fine examples indeed. Of course, as things become smoother, it is quite possible they also lose the prospecting-focus. Remember that Spencer's were one of the top retailers for a long time.

5. Give prospects the opportunity to become customers:-  After reading or seeing ads about a new herbal shampoo offering a unique benefit for thinning hair, a prospect makes a mental decision to buy one. At that very moment, the person has moved from prospect to customer, even though an actual purchase has not been made.

Once the person makes that decision, the marketers of that brand must create a variety of opportunities for the customer to buy the product. The marketers of the brand will make certain that the shampoo appears in a variety of locations where the customer encounters the product: in ads in popular TV soaps, on display at appropriate retail locations.

This five-step process differs dramatically from the mindset of the sales reps and managers who believe making sales depends only on having someone to talk to and possessing a superior sales technique.

That is rather macho and out of place in the new millennium.

(By arrangement with Innovative Media)

Feedback and queries may be e-mailed to him directly at muneermuhamed@hotmail.com