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Sales prospecting by phone: when and how to back off if you find this prospect is not viable.

Prospecting, as we use the word in sales, is looking for potential buyers. But sales prospecting is also about screening out those who will not likely be viable prospects, at least not this time ’round.

Keep in mind those prospectors out west in the Great Gold Rush of ’49. They spent months and years squatting by streams, patiently panning river sediment knowing that the game was about working through and discarding a lot of gravel in order to find the pieces of gold.

That’s a good analogy for sales: a key part of the work is in finding who IS NOT really likely to be a buyer of what you offer. After all, the time you save by NOT making a sales call on a totally wrong person is time you can use to meet with a much more promising lead.

What if something in the course of the initial conversation sets you wondering whether this really is the person you should be meeting? Is this firm really likely to have a need for what you offer? Is this the right decision maker, with the authority, need and budget?

If you’re on the phone setting up the appointment, and if the call is relatively convenient — in terms of location, travel, etc. — it may be best to take your chances and see how it works out.

But face-to-face sales calls are expensive in the time and travel invested. If you can’t make this sales call easily while in the area for another, then it’s worth asking some screening questions before you push for the appointment.

Sample telephone sales script for screening real prospects from not-likelies

Precisely what those questions may be will of course depend on your particular product and industry. This script that follows may help as a basic model that you can adapt. (Abbreviations: SR is Sales Rep, and DM is this potential Decision Maker.)

SR: “Mr. Hopkins? This is Tina Rogers of TGR Associates. I’m calling because I believe we can increase your firm’s productivity by reducing office overhead — perhaps by as much as 20% in the first year. But at this point, I’m frankly not sure if there is an appropriate mesh between our services and your needs. I’d like to ask you a few very brief questions. It’ll take about two minutes. Is this a good time, or would it be better if I called back later?”

DM: “Now is fine, provided it’s just a couple of minutes.”

SR: “I have done some initial research. Let me begin by confirming some of the things I’ve learned, just to be sure they are accurate. I understand that you’re the managing partner at your firm, and that part of your area of responsibility is to oversee all expenditures relating to the operation of the office. Is that basically right?”

DM: “Basically. There are some aspects I would clear with the management board.”

SR: “If the firm were to upgrade computer systems, would that be your area of responsibility?”

DM: “That would depend. If it’s software relating to office operations that’s my area — things such as accounting systems, word processing, and the like. But if it comes to the software on the professional side, such as specialized design software, then that would be handled by the partner in charge of professional operations.”

SR: “I see. Well, I think that may be the person I need to talk to. That’s the partner in charge of professional operations — is that the actual title? And what was their name?”

Sales judgment call

What if, after this kind of dialogue, you’re still not quite sure that this really is a viable prospect at this time? Then you to make a judgment call on whether it is better to risk losing some viable prospect at the phone stage, or to invest your time (and travel time) on sales calls that may not be appropriate.

As a top salesperson, you must have wondered, “Wouldn’t I be better off training others to do what comes so naturally to me? Shouldn’t I launch my own consulting business, write books, record audios and videos, blog, and call my own shots?”

I was talking to an entrepreneur who described a young salesman that he had trained.

At first, the initiate was so timid that he’d leave an establishment without even pitching his wares. Under threat of termination, he returned to the same stores and racked up some orders.

Before long, he opened his own motivational speaking enterprise, and it seems, he made a smooth transition and a living at it.

Apparently, teaching selling skills was a better fit for him than making sales, though of course, in your own business you still need to earn business.

But it’s not the same challenge as grinding it out, day after day, and year after year, in the trenches of commerce, selling for someone else’s business.

As a general rule, if you’re really top-notch as a seller, you’ll make more money on the phone and in the field than from behind a podium. For one thing, as a salesperson, you’re a specialist, wearing one hat.

You don’t have to pay the rent or light bill, make sure the copier has toner, and submit form after form to the government. You’re in a turnkey operation. Everything is designed for you and around you and aimed at supporting you.

In a training business, you need to sell an account and manufacture the content and then travel to and deliver the class, speech or seminar. While there are satisfactions to be gained from having total project responsibility, there are also drawbacks, not the least of which is a fracturing of your attention, and ultimately, exhaustion, if you keep doing it all alone, whether you succeed or fail.

Indeed, salespeople that haven’t had to run their own businesses have no idea how spoiled and pampered they are. Simply being able to FOCUS on one challenge, refining and perfecting it as time passes, is an amazing luxury.

True, you’re not building equity, in the conventional sense. Typically, that fat commission check doesn’t contain shares of stock in the venture. But there’s nothing to prevent you from learning enough as a seller to then open your own shop, later on, with savings and the savvy you accumulated.

One of the downsides to teaching others is that you might pay the awful price of stalling your own learning. Yes, you’ll get better and better at delivering that seminar, but you probably won’t get enough NEW selling experience to spawn your next set of insights.

Like classroom teachers, you’ll be tempted to take the shortcut of using your old, ragged notes of yesteryear, because they’re so tried-and-true. Your trainees will remind you of your creeping obsolescence by asking you if you’ve heard of the flashy “new” sales method of the month.

Alternatively, if you invest in research and development to the exclusion of disseminating the fine content you have already created, you’ll suffer from frequent feast-and-famine episodes, incurring repeated risks to the financial health of your enterprise.

How can you innovate, stay on the leading edge, tirelessly hustle for new accounts, and do the actual training, bookkeeping and related fulfillment functions?

Where is the leverage in that?

And this is the fundamental scourge of becoming an independent sales guru, or really a “talent,” a speaker, performer, or consultant of any kind.

You would think, “Hey, it’s my own business, so there is unlimited growth potential!” but that’s often illusory. Even if you are lucky enough to create a true “hit,” like a song or a stage “act” that goes viral or packs the house, you won’t be able to clone yourself and staff fast enough to fully take advantage of the trend you launched.

Competitors, lone wolves and larger, and better-financed firms will imitate faster than you can generate, though you were the one to initiate.

While you’re tussling with these tensions, the other you, your clone in the parallel universe that never stopped selling, exclusively, well, that person is thriving.

You’ve had a more exciting, dramatic, and varied career. You took bigger risks, and from time to time, they yielded mightier rewards. Your name is in the Library of Congress, and is mentioned with respect by historians of the sales game, but your counterpart’s name is at the top of a fatter financial statement.

Who came out ahead?

Ultimately, that’s a value judgment.

One piece of advice: NEVER STOP SELLING, even if you believe you have promoted yourself way above the job title, salesperson.

Because even if you strike out on your own, as one of my clients once said: “I’ve never met a problem in business that a few more sales couldn’t cure!”

Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top-ranked sales speaker, negotiation speaker, and customer service speaker at Google, and a distinguished, sought-after telemarketing speaker, motivational speaker, and attorney. President of Customersatisfaction.com, he is a frequent TV and radio commentator and the best-selling author of 12 books and more than 1,700 articles that appear in 25,000 publications.