Ask a direct selling distributor “What is the most stressful part of your job?” and they will tell you that it is to find the right prospect. People who are interested in sales are often good with talking the right prospects into their sales cycle; finding them has always been the hardest part.
We, at Epixel, wanted to make this part of their career easy and here we are, analyzing the first step to the last of a successful sales prospecting life cycle.
By sales prospecting lifecycle, we mean that very moment the thought of finding a prospect strikes a distributor.
And what happens next? Let’s analyze.
What is sales prospecting?
Simply put, it is the process of finding possible opportunities from your lead source that could be converted into customers with various nurturing strategies. Sales prospecting is not constant cold calling or email blasting, neither is it a one-shot process. It is an artistic process of finding the right leads and successfully establishing a trust-based relationship for longer customer retention.
Giving an enhanced experience to your MLM prospects, in terms of establishing relationships and exchange of information, helps you earn their trust making you their all-time advisors. This could be achieved only if prospecting is done right.
Role of sales prospecting in the sales process
Sales prospecting is the first step in the sales process. So, make the first impression the best because this process is sure to have a long-standing impact on your brand.
It can work vibrantly in ways than you have ever imagined, thus setting a clear prospecting outline will shape your overall sales process.
Creates brand awareness
23%
revenue increase is forecasted with consistent brand presentation across all platforms.
Source - Forbes
Sales prospecting builds a unique brand image in the minds of potential customers. Distributors must be trained to deliver this uniqueness across to your MLM prospects.
Generates interest for products or services
59%
of shoppers prefer to buy new products from the brands they trust.
Source - Invespcro
Well-informed distributors can juggle the features and benefits of your products to suit your prospects’ interests. This generated interest can be leveraged to take them to the next level in the sales pipeline.
Gathers quality data
45%
of organizations use data to attain and retain customers.
Source - MicroStrategy
Every golden opportunity wouldn’t convert to sales. Sales prospecting helps distributors analyze data from the lead pool and use it to run market research and gather insights beneficial to their future business.
Trending ideas to prospect better
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Establish your sales prospecting in 3 easy steps
MLM Prospecting begins with identifying the right leads. You cannot randomly pick from your lead source and try converting them. That would never work. You need to have a clear action plan on how to satisfy your prospect demands and win them over.
1. Develop a contact strategy
You have 1000 leads in your pipeline and you actually do not know how many would convert. What would you do? Connect with all 1000?
You would want to eliminate leads that would never convert.
Segmenting through lead scoring and other visitors' website behavior analysis will help you in this decision-making process to a great extent. Analyzing the existing customer personas will also help you in identifying reliable opportunities from your lead base.
Once the segmentation is done it is easier to prioritize the opportunities, focus on the time, and customize the approach by walking them slowly and steadily into the buying process.
2. Develop your approach
Random automated messages, generic face-to-face conversations, and pure marketing pitches will never take you close to your prospects.
Your approach must be warm, unique, incredible, and deliver value.
Prospects look for distributors who are knowledgeable enough to guide them through the brand journey.
Deliver an approach accommodating your prospects’ needs and demands. Prioritize their priorities and move along their buying process attending to their needs.
While technology helps in segmentation, you can also work parallelly on your intuitions to pick the right leads to focus.
Share your thoughts on your prospect needs but never on a sales pitch.
Analyze who is actively listening and focus on them.
When you talk to them, share not about yourself or your experiences but leverage your experience to enhance their experience.
Listen to them immensely; their needs, demands, and concerns.
Once you have their consent, deliver your unique value proposition.
3. Develop a steady prospect relationship
Once you connect and establish a successful relationship with your prospect, whether they convert to a customer or not, you need to nurture that relationship, in constant intervals. This is a contingent process but contributes highly to the lifetime value of your customers.
Give them an enhanced experience in intervals to make them realize you are always there for them.
Gather a thorough understanding of your customer preferences like the type of products, how often and when do they like to be contacted, communication medium, etc.
Sending them new offers, including them in product launches, sharing insights on products, etc would immensely add up to their trust and loyalty.
Seek reviews regularly and assess your prospect or customer experience and decide what needs improvement. They are undoubtedly the greatest source of genuine feedback.
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Concluding our thoughts,
Sales prospecting is never a one-time event, it is an eternal process that decides the strength of your brand’s foundation. What we need to understand and underline is that, in sales prospecting, establishing trust-based relationships count, the right approach counts, and all the more, reaching out to the right prospect counts. Distributors must focus on these elements to make the most out of their prospecting efforts.
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Comments (1)
Michael Kissinger
Excellent article