Don't Pass Up a Prospect

Most salespeople have disqualified a prospect based on assumptions many times in their career. It’s easy to do—you just jump to a conclusion based on suppositions without doing any research on them. If a prospect doesn’t use products like the one that you’re selling, you might write them off completely. Or you might make assumptions based on information that’s incorrect. If you see that their building looks run-down, for example, you may not even walk in to try to sell them. Who knows what’s inside those walls? The problem, of course, is that this situation often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: No one sells them, so they don’t buy. And because they don’t buy, you don’t try to sell. This cycle is only broken when you decide to put your assumptions aside, walk through the door of that run-down building, and find out what’s inside.



I used to travel a two-lane highway every Tuesday, driving between two good customers of mine who were located in towns about thirty miles apart. I sold television advertising at the time. Located about midway between my two customers on the side of that highway was a small farm house with a good-sized metal machine shed behind it. It looked like a dozen other farm houses with sheds just like it on that highway except that this house had a little sign out front that said "Energy Savers" on it. I probably drove by that house and its sign for six months.



Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I was ahead of schedule, so I stopped to see just what "Energy Savers" was all about. I knocked on the front door of the house and got no answer. I walked around to the back and heard somebody whistling in the machine shed. When I went inside, I found a big beefy guy in overalls laying under a trailer working to get a piece of baling wire unwound from one of the axles. He didn’t look much like the "normal" television advertiser.



But it turned out he not only became a television advertiser, he became one of my largest accounts! Like many farmers, he had another business on the side. "Energy Savers" turned out to be an early provider of blown insulation, which offered an inexpensive, non-intrusive way to insulate the side walls and ceilings of existing homes. It was a perfect product to advertise on television and, because it carried such a high profit margin, this guy in the overalls and seed corn cap could afford to buy a lot of TV advertising from me.



If I had continued to judge the potential by the appearance of the prospect, I never would have made that first call on him. Remember, you can’t deposit assumptions in your bank account—only commissions.



Prospecting and qualifying shouldn’t be a chore to be avoided. It should be the beginning of the creative selling process where you open your mind to the possibilities and then try to make them happen. It’s one more adventure in selling.