Chuck Terry’s Blog

Prospecting for Customers in the “New Economic Reality”

In a February 6th report in the Wall Street Journal noted economists referred to our current National financial state as a “slow motion train wreck”. Not great news on the surface but there are companies that are growing their businesses and expanding through tough economic times in spite of the wreckage. What do they know that others don’t? Is it luck, some sort of divine intervention, or is their sales mechanism simply better than their competitors?

While there is no simple or universal answer to those questions enterprising companies that want to prosper during tough times have at least one common place to focus that will help them to emerge as winners during a slow economy…their sales organization. With most of the companies that I am speaking with there is one particular area of the sales function that seems to differentiate the companies that are gaining market share from the ones that are just trying to hold on. That area of distinction occurs with how many quality prospects are going into the sales pipeline. Wherever you find companies with healthy pipelines you invariably find sales people that are prospecting more effectively.

I don’t know many sales professionals that enjoy cold calling to develop prospects. Maybe they shouldn’t do it anymore? In today’s climate of economic pressure and constant interruption marketing we need to reexamine our traditional look at the process of cold calling. The sales professionals I referenced above that are the more effective at filling their pipelines are for the most part doing very little “dialing for dollars”. Instead, they are almost always masters of networking through social and business groups in new and creative ways. They are making a lot of “warm calls” through introductions from peers and leveraging ever growing social/ business networks to feed the pipeline.

There are a growing number of social networking and business networking avenues that savvy sales professionals are tapping into such as Facebook, Jigsaw, and LinkedIn.  These virtual networking mediums can make the process of building a professional business network a far more effective strategy than the “old school” process of cold calling by telephone.  But don’t think that fully leveraging such strategies is as easy as signing up and beginning to tap into new prospects. These new electronic vehicles require a thorough understanding of how to effectively operate within their guidelines as well as a carefully planned and religiously executed strategy.

Before you think I am advocating telling your sales force to stay home in their pajamas and mine the internet for gold let me clarify that what I am actually advocating is only one piece of an overall networking strategy in a changing sales climate. Your team will probably need to be given some specialized training around how to become more effective networkers in both live and virtual environments to support this approach to building a deeper pipeline of prospects.

Say good bye to the old days of pounding the phones and hello to a brave new world where your next big deal may only be a mouse click away.