Sales Prospecting

The book I read to research this post was Sales Prospecting for Dummies by Tom Hopkins which is a very good book that I bought from amazon. Sales is the art of finding potential customers to sell to. Many salespeople ignore the fact that their best potential customers are friends & family & their referrals. Somebody did a survey that showed that you do cold calling you will have a success rate of 10% but if you call on referrals that rises to 60%. It's a good idea to get the referrer to contact the person he is referring & even if that person doesn't buy there & then they may at a later date. Going back to the idea of selling to friends & family, chances are they see you in a good light, they know you really well & they know you believe in the product which makes them ideal customers. Some people think sales & friendship should be kept separate but if you believe in the item & it's genuinely helping your friend in some way there is nothing wrong with that. A saying which is worth bearing in mind is if you help enough other people get what they want they will help you get what you want. That's a quote from Zig Ziglar who is a famous business coach.