Ways to Find Prospects to Sell to in the Twenty-First Century

Need to Find Prospects to Sell to?

While prospecting in the twenty-first century is somewhat different than it was in the last century. It is not impossible to find prospects that really want what you are trying to sell and offering to buyers.

I know things are a little different than they used to be but I need to change my way of thinking as I am writing this as well. I say that because the majority of my current readers were not even old enough to try to sell things back in the last century.

The majority of today's new salespeople were not even old enough to get a job selling in the last century with the exception of a few things like school projects offering cookies or candy bars and things like that.

I will have admit I am just as guilty as most in my thinking because I forget that the world is a whole lot different place than it was when I first started selling things for a living. Back in the old days we could knock doors, call people out of the blue and cold canvass on the phone with out breaking any laws at the time.

Today as you know many of these practices are unlawful in most of today's communities. But if you use a little common sense there are ways of getting even more interesting leads than I did in the nineteen-sixties.

The very first prospecting that I did was go into the office every working day about eight o'clock in the morning and after the short sales meeting my self and all of the other salespeople would pick up the phone and start making calls to find interested prospects. It would take about five calls to get someone to answer the phone and about one out of ten people we talked to would agree to an appointment.

The goal every day was to make six appointments for that day or evening. I was really very good at doing this and honestly do not remember many days that I did not make at least six or seven appointments are more for the day or evening.

The reason we needed to make so many appointments was because it took making a presentation to both the husband and the wife in order to have a sale that was not likely to cancel later on. One legged pitches just did not work in most cases. So some times, or I should say a lot of times the other person that you did not make the appointment with would run late or could not see you that day or worst of all, canceled the appointment altogether.

So with six appointments or more you would have a good chance of making two or three presentations a day. Most salespeople would close on average one sale out of every three presentations that they made. Most of the time my average was a little better than that but still two or three approved sales per week made for a very good living in the day. Most of my friends made about thirty five dollars a week and I on the other hand, would make well over two hundred dollars most weeks. If you consider that a dollar back in the day was worth seven of today's dollars it was a very good income for a twenty something young man.

But let's talk about today. You can't canvass door to door and you can't canvass on the phone so what can you do?

Have you ever considered working at a fair, flea market or one of these marketing shows that people put on in communities ever once in a while. You can also go to the shopping mall and rent a small space to put up a card table and get some leads there. We also used to go to department stores, grocery stores and now that they have wholesale outlet stores you could probably get a location there cheap enough to make some money. Depending on where you live there are probably fifteen or twenty places you could think of right off the top of your head.

I made more sales working at counter sales than I ever did cold canvassing. If you think about it is the same as cold canvassing but you see three to ten times as many prospects a day as you would going door to door. The number one thing you have to remember when doing counter sales is to have some kind of a free drawing to get the prospects to your counter.

Another very good method that would work great in today's market is referrals. People like to buy from people they trust. That is a given and if their mother, father or very best friend recommends you to them, it becomes very easy to get into the door. How do you get referrals, you might ask? Easy, you ask for them.

There are still easy cheap ways today where you can advertise your self and your product. You can put business cards out at restaurants you visit as well as on small bulletin boards at car washes, grocery stores and the like.

You may also have some local penny shopper newspapers in your area that you can put an ad or two in for little or nothing. There are usually some local internet shopping sites that let you put free or low cost ads on in the area where you live.

Now that I have got you to thinking you might come up with some more great ideas on your own. If you do please add them to the comments so the other viewers can learn of the methods as well.

Thank you,

Billy J Gibson

better known as The Selling Fool