When Prospecting and Selling Do Not Work Well Together.

By Robert Estupinian

 

A couple of years ago the Harvard Business Review featured a research article about the ability of salespeople to handle more than one task. The research showed that on average most salespeople were really good at only one thing.  The other tasks that they were asked to do were either not done at all, or done below an acceptable standard. This is a concern because the fact is that most sales positions these days  require salespeople to perform various tasks.

 

One set of tasks that are customarily required to be accomplished in tandem by most organizations is prospecting and selling. In a lot of  sales organizations it is believed that the salesperson is expected to find the leads, cultivate them, set the appointment, identify the needs, develop solutions, present, close, and then do the follow up. That is a lot for one person to be able to do well. Just looking at the list of things to do it is reasonable to understand why on average a lot of sales people will not be able to do the whole process well from beginning to end.

 

I have discovered that those that are good at selling usually do not like prospecting. This is not to say that they will not ask for business or seek an opportunity to offer their services.  Instead, when I am referring to prospecting I am referring to finding leads, qualifying those leads, and set the appointment. These are inherently a different set of skills than the skills necessary to identify needs, develop solutions, present, close, then follow up to be sure that everything goes well.  When organizations require their salespeople to do all these tasks they often complain of poor sales performance.

  

Some of the current business research demonstrates that just because an employee is good at prospecting  it does not mean that they are necessarily good at selling. Many years ago I came across this situation when I was building a sales force for a new financial planning firm. In the process of doing an interview I discovered a very bright young lady who told me that her best attribute was the ability to set up appointments and get people excited about the appointment. She was so confident in this particular skill that she asked for a phone and immediately set up an appointment for one of our staff members. As you could imagine we were all very impressed and hired her on the spot. What we soon discovered was that as good as she was at making appointments she was completely the opposite at conducting the sales meeting. Despite working with her on developing the skills necessary to be good at consultative selling, she was simply not going to be good at it. Instead of getting rid of her, I decided to use her to set appointments for the other financial planners who were good at consultative selling, but hated prospecting .  The results were beyond imagination. The new financial planning staff was elated to know that they were getting very good appointments, and they began to close at an above average rate. Later the firm discovered that having this prospecting system in place became a major draw for recruiting other financial planners, and also prevented other firms from stealing away their planners.

 

The prospecting system proved to be the most advantageous strategy that the firm ever employed, and took them from being an unknown in the financial services world to a force to be reckoned with in less than a year.

 

This concept is nothing new and is employed by many of the large companies. They recognize that there are differences between prospecting and selling. However, they may take this concept deeper and place personnel into other areas such as technical sales support and account maintenance.  I am not saying that this is necessary for all organizations. A lot depends on the complexity of your sales process and the size of your organization.

 

Nevertheless, it is important to take a look at what is involved in your selling process and develop the systems that will allow your staff to maximize their abilities in the market place. So what is best for your organization depends on host of variables and this is an area where a sales consultant can walk you through the options.