Whatever the good or service being sold, one thing remains true for everyone: finding customers is neither easy nor instantaneous. Prospecting for customers is something you have to learn, and it’s essential if you want to achieve a respectable turnover. When it comes to prospecting for customers, there are several schools of thought, but in the age of the Internet, the big winner is undoubtedly the ‘agile’ method. Find out more below.
The what method?
When it comes to sales, most people who built their careers in the 20th century are familiar with the good old ‘waterfall’ sales method. The principle is as follows:
- We’re looking for a list with the contact details of as many people as possible;
- We send mass letters and emails;
- We make phone calls to the entire list, without discrimination;
- We’re keeping our fingers crossed that in the flood of people flooded with messages, some will decide to buy our product or pay for our service.
You know, the good old-fashioned method that prompts many people to go on a red list, put a ‘no flyers’ sticker on their letterbox, or create an e-mail address reserved exclusively for ‘spam’! As you might expect, this method isn’t really effective any more. It undoubtedly used to be, but today it is considered to be costly for minimal results. So rather than the ‘cascade’ method, let’s look at the principle of the ‘agile’ method:
- We start by targeting a specific audience;
- We think about the best way to send targeted messages (frequency, times, etc.);
- You refine your contact list over time based on personal connections and verified information, and not on contact details sold wholesale by others (via your site’s mailing list, or your accounts on various social networks);
- We focus on a sincere relationship with our customers (again via social networks or other communication tools that enable real feedback).
Clearly, the angle of attack is very different: in one case we speculate on what we think might work, in the other we enter into a real exchange, focused on the customer and what he’s looking for rather than on what we think he’s looking for.
Why is the agile method the best?
Are you still wondering what makes the agile method so superior to other methods of prospecting for new customers? You’d think you’d never been a customer yourself! According to Salesoft’s research, with a much smaller list of prospects to start with, you can easily achieve results that are twice as good as those achieved using the cascade method of prospecting for customers. This means you can concentrate on the essentials, with targeted rather than unwanted emails or phone calls. In the interests of efficiency, it therefore seems clear that cascade prospecting is now outdated and not very productive. A day only has 24 hours, so concentrate on the opportunities that are most likely to lead to something!
