Simply getting a hold of prospects during sales prospecting can be one of your biggest challenges. With that being the case, the moments when you are actually on the phone or in front of prospects are tremendously valuable. And unfortunately, most of us improvise and “wing it” by relying on our experience to tell us what to say and ask.

Regardless of our experience and skill level, when we improvise, we decrease our ability to get the most out of these opportunities and interactions. We might not ask the perfect line of questioning to deliver the right statements because we are thinking and reacting off the cuff.

 

Football Analogy

Think about a professional football quarterback. He may have tremendous natural ability and years of experience. But when it is game time, he does not just jump in the game and rely solely on those two things. He actually will study a set of plays that tell him what to do and have them memorized. And not only will he have his steps planned out, but he will also study the opposition’s plays and typical actions. This level of preparation will greatly improve his ability to perform at his highest level and have consistent results.

You can look at it the same way, and if you want to operate like a pro and not only exceed your targets, but to perform at a high level consistently, you can take great steps forward in this area by preparing what you will say and ask when talking with sales prospects.

 

What to Prepare

When we think about preparing what to say, we often think about what we will say to describe what our products do to build interest. But what is more important and more helpful is having a list of good questions to ask the prospect.

When you ask the right questions, they can not only help you qualify the prospect to make sure that it makes sense to keep moving forward, but they can also help to extract valuable information.

Another thing that you can prepare ahead of time that can greatly improve your results and performance is responses to objections that you can anticipate coming up. You are guaranteed to face objections when sales prospecting, and you can either improvise when those come up, or you can have some responses prepared that can help you to keep conversations going.

You may also want to develop statements that clearly and concisely communicate what you have to offer and how you help. When sales prospecting, you do not have much time to work with, so you do not have time to go into detail on the products that you offer and what they do. As a result, develop some brief statements that communicate the value that you offer, the improvements that you can make, the ROI that you deliver, how you differ from your competition, etc.