You've become an expert at the right things to keep your prospecting file full of potential customers, right? Or are you a victim of self-defeating strategies? Here's a "please do not do these" list of the 10 worst prospecting routes, to be avoided at all costs.
- Failing to ask for testimonials and maintain a list of satisfied customers willing to act as references.
- Failing to qualify prospects before you approach them.
- Not including an upfront, attention-getting, call to action in your communications.
- Neglecting to target your communications to specific segments of prospects.
- Focusing on your services rather than on the prospect's benefits.
- Having an unprepared elevator speech with the benefits of your product or service tailored to the specific prospect with whom you are meeting.
- Bad follow-up, including not following up at all, waiting too long before contacting the prospect again, and following up too much, or too often.
- Failing to determine the prospect's business problem and thereby not selling with a solution-oriented focus.
- Being unprepared at the initial meeting with no background research on your prospect.
- Over-promising a service you are not sure you can deliver.
