Five ways to determine which are good prospects

All prospects are not created equal; some are more likely to turn into sales. To avoid wasting time, you need to weed out the poor prospects and concentrate your efforts on prospects who will yield a return on your investment of effort, money and resources.

The following five steps will help you distinguish good prospects from bad prospects:

1) Define your target market precisely. Break your market down by demographics ie geography, market, company employee size etc. This will enable you to focus on the prospects that match your target audience.

2) Assess need, budget and the prospect’s purchasing authority. Ask basic questions that will allow you to determine whether a prospect is ready, such as:

What's the timescale for this project?
Who else is involved in making the decision?
What's the budget for the product or service?
How will the decision be made?
Is your company ready to purchase if the right product or service is found?
If you decide that our product or service meets the need, what will the next step be?

3) Ask for a “yes” or "no." Conventional thought says that as long as the prospect hasn't said "no," then the sale is still possible. However, when it comes to rating prospects, get a decision, even if it's no. It’s better to find out sooner rather than later that the opportunities of closing a sale are slight.

4)  Evaluate the prospect's financial position. Creditworthy prospects are better than high-risk customers. Stable prospects are better than customers going through widespread changes. A company that is merging or downsizing may delay buying decisions.

5) Develop a sales lead scoring system. Rate prospects by a letter or number grade, based on the possibility of closing the sale. Concentrate on A or B prospects, and upgrade or downgrade the other prospects as circumstances change.

Customer focus

Very many companies today have a customer focus, otherwise known as market orientation. These phrases imply that the company focuses ll of its activities and products on consumer demand. There is the customer-driven approach, the market-change approach and the product innovation approach.

With the consumer-driven approach, the consumer wants brcome the strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is developed until it undergoes consumer research. Each aspect of a product, including the nature of the product itself, is affected by the needs of consumers. The starting point is the consumer. The reason for this approach is that it's pointless spending R&D budget developing products that people will never buy. Looking at the past, many products were commercial failures despite being technology breakthroughs.

The formal approach to customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA (Solution, Information, Value, Access). The SIVA system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded with a customer focus.

Using the SIVA Model generates a demand or customer-centric alternative to the traditional 4Ps model (product, price, place, promotion) of marketing.

Product → Solution
Promotion → Information
Price → Value
Place → Access

The revised four elements of the SIVA model are:

Solution: is the solution appropriate to the customer's need?

Information: is the customer aware of the solution? and do they know enough to make a buying decision?

Value: does the customer know what it will cost, the benefits and their reward?

Access: Where can the customer purchase the solution? and how easily can they buy it and get delivery?

The SIVA model was originally proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the press, the Marketing Management Journal of the American Marketing Association. It was then presented in Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society published in the UK. In essence, the model focuses on the customer and how they, the prospect view the potential transaction.