What is your top sales prospecting tip for 2012?

Here's a tip for building very targeted, high quality prospect lists. Build personas of your ideal prospect(s) and then associating keywords with those personas is a great sales prospecting technique. You can then search for those keywords on the major social networks and identify prospects that fit the personas you created.

The key is greater preparation way in advance of actually prospecting to individuals. Despite the opportunities presented by social media, it is taking more time than ever to connect directly with buyers, so you have to ensure that you are investing your time, a none renewable resources, on the right targets. Then you can leverage social media and other traditional tools to engage.

The other aspect of the up-front work is the ability to leverage direct networks, social media, and all sources for introductions and/or references to your contacts' networks. A simple introduction via LinkedIn can save you hours of effort.

Still on the notion of time, don't waste your prospects' time. More than ever, if they sense that you are speaking in general terms, or there is nothing for them in engaging with you, they will drop you. This is not about the talk track, but what can they immediately relate to in your message, it is not a time to be gentile; for those that like to talk about finding the pain (I don't, objectives are much stronger). This about knowing what their objectives (pain) are in advance, hold it directly in front of them with one hand, while holding the solution proudly in the other hand. This all goes back to the up-front work, not sexy, solitary in nature, but important.

Adapt!

How companies buy has changed at the core and those that refuse to adapt and change their thinking will experience a dramatic drop-off in results in 2012.

In order to succeed in this new era, sales prospectors must commit the time and effort to get up to speed on how buyers are making their buy/no-buy decisions and then put a strategy and plan together to be able to meet these expectations.

A major commitment to learn these new tactics and tools will help raise the results of those that make the effort. As an individual comtributor, you cannot afford to wait for your company to provide the training that is required. Company sales executives need to carve out a much larger portion of the budget pie in 2012 for training and re-tooling. Sales reps are resourceful by nature and they will leave to go where the training is provided if you are not doing so.

Summary: Listen and learn from your prospective customers, create a foundation of process & support to provide what they are asking for, and then select, deploy and train with all your might.

I believe THE most important prospecting advantage in 2012 will be understanding, finding and responding to buying signals. Not the late-stage signals we used to think about (questions about price, contract, delivery timing, etc.). I'm talking about pain, problems, symptoms of a problem the prospect needs to solve (whether or not they've gotten to the solution identification or research stage).

What are some of the things your prospective customers experience before they need what you’re selling? These buying signals are from people who aren’t yet ready to buy, but are about ready to start looking for solutions to a problem or pain. If you know your customer targets well enough, you can specifically search for those keywords and phrases from prospects on Twitter and other social channels. HootSuite, Twithawk and a variety of online (and usually free) tools can help you with that.

But before you get to the tools, make sure you know what buying signals you're looking for in the first place. Know exactly how and why your prospects get to you, or generally get to the solution research phase. Those symptoms, those reasons, are your buying signals.

Critical for sales in the coming months.

Shifting myself and the organization from the traditional "Outbound" marketing paradigm to a more efficient and cost-effective "Inbound" marketing model.

Hi Lydia! My tip is a caution against ruling out certain prospecting strategies and techniques simply because they have been around for a while. In particular, recognize that social media augment but do not replace phone, direct marketing, e-mail, field sales, or anything else. Rather, the social media enhance the effectiveness of each of those in conjunction with social.

There is no universal, 100% correct answer about how to market. Businesses still need new customers and there are many more channels and media in which to pursue them and/or attract them. As ever, the wise and targeted application of multiple marketing media almost always outperforms initiatives in one medium alone. Happy New Year!

I honestly believe that the average business spends too much time trying to initiate connections directly with prospects. In other words, trying "to sell". We've found that our relationships have developed into our most profitable referred customers. In other words, we "were sold" by the folks that we have direct relationships with who are trusted and influence their networks. In 2012, we're working to improve our relationships with influencers so we can capture more referrals.

I agree with @Douglas, although inbound marketing (content, social and lead gen) is only part of the answer. At some point you need to connect with potential buyers in a meaningful way, so the natural progression might be Blog Twitter LinkedIn Skype or Phone Meet & Greet In-depth Conversation on Needs & Solutions Deal. I do think this "get to know you period" via social followed by in-person feels right to most of our good clients. The ones that don't work out are the formal process of RFP, group meeting, presentation, quote. Those seem so stale and tense for both parties that nothing really good can emerge.

Prospecting will take on a second life with:
1. New sales productivity tools that complement and enhance the existing (phone and email) tools - more social engagement in presentations w video and appointment confirmations through texting.
2. Building high octane momentum to maximize the few seconds you get a live one and not wasting words because of not being prepared.
3. Content is currency and deploying a sales strategy that includes relevant and engaging content that maps out through the sales cycle to create an inbound opp instead of outbound.

I was planning to answer this question until I read, "building high octane momentum to maximize..." and my head exploded.

The answer obviously varies depending on what industry you are in and what product you represent. Ultimately, it's all about fundamentals. Salespeople today are overly focused on shortcuts, but sales is still about trust and that is best accomplished face-to-face.

How do you buy and who do you buy from? I buy brands I already know and trust on-line, but everything else I want to experience firsthand and meet the person I'm buying from. That's also the way I sell. Referrals and networking are great prospecting tools, but qualified sales leads are everywhere we turn. The key is to keep your eyes open, do your research before you introduce yourself to a prospect, and only introduce your product and its benefits if you make a connection.

More to the point of the question asked, one good prospecting tip is to "go shopping in the back of your closet." How many sales did you fail to close in the past because the chemistry was off, the timing wasn't quite right, or the need wasn't really there? A year or two later those things may very well have changed. There is a new decision-maker, the decision to buy from a competitor instead may not have worked out, etc. Reach out to those folks by sharing a pile of client testimonials that you've accumulated in the recent past and things may go very differently this time.

Jay Ahuja
WFAE 90.7FM
Charlotte's NPR News Source

Selling re-print rights to my articles, thank you for asking Lydia... Healthy and prosperous New Year to everyone!