How Committed Are You To Finding New Customers?

By Jim Pancero, CSP, CPAE, Hall of Fame Speaker & Thought Leader

Jim Pancero

It used to be prospecting for new business — whether identifying new customers or finding new business opportunities within existing customers — was fairly straight forward. Most found success “dialing for dollars” by spending all day making outbound calls or cruising local industrial parks and walking into new companies to discover the names and titles of those people you wanted to be selling to.

But most industries have experienced a profound cultural shift the last several years on how people want to buy and do business with you (and your competitors).

The three critical realities of successful new business prospecting today are:

#1 Reality – Prospecting for new business has gotten tougher the last 5 to 7 years. Most buyers today don’t answer (or return) phone calls from people they don’t know. And most companies also did away with their lobby receptionist who could tell you who to contact (and sell).

#2 Reality – Even though it’s a lot tougher to identify and reach new prospects, you still need to keep growing and expanding your business by bringing in new accounts. Just because prospecting has gotten harder, doesn’t remove the need to continue looking for new business. How much new business prospecting did you do last week?

#3 Reality – Companies are actively buying from new vendors and are still looking for new solutions to help increase their success. Prospecting has gotten tougher, but that doesn’t change the need to continue pursuing new business opportunities. Competitive advantages can be gained when you become more proactive in your new business efforts.

How Are You Changing The Way You Go After New Business?

Winning new business today requires you to create new ways to identify and connect with potential new buyers. Some options to consider:

• Ask your best customers to introduce you to others they know who could benefit from your support and solutions.
• Actively work LinkedIn to identify and connect with new buyers. LinkedIn has become the go-to communications platform for business today. How active are you and your company on LinkedIn? You can gain market awareness by regularly posting company announcements, ideas to help improve buyers’ use of your products or services and posting (preferably video) testimonials from satisfied buyers.

A great way to start a dialogue with a new prospect is to monitor their LinkedIn efforts. A number are finding success sending LinkedIn messages to identified individuals to start a conversation. Another way to get a new prospect’s attention is to follow and comment on their posts. Studies show there’s an 80% chance that a prospect will check out the LinkedIn home page of anyone commenting on their posts who they don’t know.

LinkedIn’s “Sales Navigator” (an additional charge) is an amazing tool that will identify anyone’s name and job title for any company you search. It will also tell you who their competitors are, their current business revenues and challenges, and what they’re currently working on to improve.

Are You Willing To Do What It Takes To Become A More Proactive (And Successful) New Business Prospector?

No matter what works today while reaching out to new buyers, the foundations of effective prospecting still apply! Here are four ways you can strengthen your new business selling efforts:

1^st Suggestion – Do more research (than your competitors) on potential prospects before attempting contact. The old “Ready – Fire – Aim” philosophy of prospecting where you only researched a new opportunity after you started talking with them is just too high a risk today.

You need to be ready to share your understanding of their business challenges and markets before you start talking. Looking them up on LinkedIn (and Sales Navigator), checking out their company website, Googling their company, and looking up each prospect on Facebook are all great ways to learn more about your targeted prospects. You can usually see their photos and bios on LinkedIn to identify their age and experience levels.

A great place to identify new prospect companies is to research your existing customers (on Sales Navigator) to identify their biggest competitors. If you’re successfully selling to them, then you’ll also likely be able to offer solid solutions to their competitors! You can also generate lists of your existing customers’ major competitors by asking Chat-GPT.

2^nd Suggestion – Build a “Top 10 prospects” list. It’s really hard to target a prospect you haven’t even identified. Your list should include each prospect’s name, phone, e-mail and one or two important facts from your research (in case they do return your connection attempts).

3^rd Suggestion – Identify specific times to prospect. Prospecting doesn’t generate any long-term success unless (and until) you carve out specific blocks of time to prospect.

What percentage of your week or month are you devoting to new business prospecting? New sales reps should be committing as much as 75% of their month to new business efforts. Even experienced reps in existing territories need to be spending at least 25% of their time either finding new companies to sell or looking for new application opportunities within existing customers.

4^th Suggestion – Strengthen your answer to a buyer who will ask, “Why, based on all the competitive opportunities available to me, do I want to buy from you?” Going after new prospects without a strong message of uniqueness is like going hunting without bullets. Even if you get a chance to shoot, you won’t be able to hit anything without a bulleted message of why you’re better than your competitors. Are you prepared to explain (in less than 2 minutes), “Why do I want to buy from you?”

This Is Such A Great Time To Actively Prospect For New Business!

Too many reps have given up on actively prospecting for new business since it’s so hard to identify who to call and getting potential customers to talk. However, actively pursuing new business (when your competitors aren’t) could be the best competitive edge available to help you — and your team — sell even more!

We know you’re good, now are you ready to get even better?

About Jim Pancero, Dallas TX – Jim has been a successful sales and sales leadership speaker, trainer, and consultant for over 40 years, helping distribution and equipment manufacturers increase their competitive advantage as well as strengthen their sales leadership skills. Learn more of Jim’s ideas at www.pancero.com or by checking out his three-a-week sales & sales leadership videos being posted on LinkedIn and YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/JimPancero offering ideas to help you sell even more. You can also subscribe to Jim’s free weekly newsletter to stay updated on all his latest videos being posted – sign up at https://jimpanceroinc.m-pages.com/subscribe.