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In my last post we talked about the two primary things we need to get from prospects. The first thing is information and the second is relationship. A relationship with the prospect is almost always going to have to be established before they will buy from you. Unfortunately, relationships take time and we don’t have a lot of time as sales professionals with ridiculously high sales budgets to meet.

Virtually every study that has ever been done (and there have been many) shows that on average it takes about six contacts with a prospect before they start buying from you. Do you honestly think you have worn down the prospect with your repeated phone calls and appointments with them and that is why they start to buy from you? Do you think it’s just your fantastic persistence that is doing the trick? This is only partially true. The real fact is that you have created a relationship with the prospect over an average of six contacts. People buy from people they are comfortable with and that they feel they can trust. There is no shortcut for this.

Instead of thinking of prospecting as a “numbers” game where you need to wear down the prospect, and yourself, think of it as a relationship game. Every type of contact you have with the prospect is helping to build the relationship with the prospect. Focus on relationship building and information gathering when prospecting. Prospecting is more than just seeing how many prospects you can call and how many times you can call each one before they start to buy.

Tags: Prospecting

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