As noted earlier locating of potential consumer for a product or service is prospecting A resume force of prospects is critical to the success of both experienced and new sales people Prospecting is one of the most challenging components of a salesmen job. In fact, many experts note that prospecting is most important activity a salesman does for sales are the life blood any successful business house. Prospecting does the work of purifying the lifeblood by providing more and more oxygen-turns making sales organization more oxy rich. The reasons that explain the significance of sound prospecting are:

1. To Increase the Present Sales:

It is well-established fact that sales are to be built or made because; they do not fall from the sky like a manna or do not popup off accident. Unless the salesman has an effective plan of prospecting, he can not dream of multiplying his sales. So long as the prospecting keep pumping in new prospects or retaining the existing one, there is no real danger. If prospecting is brought to half, soon he finds that his sales are dwindling instead of swelling.

2. To Replace the Lost Customers:

Valuable customers are lost because of certain reasons. One estimate by experts says: 1.00 percent of customers DIE 3.00 percent of customers MOVE AWAY 5.00 percent of customers FORM OTHER FRIENDSHIPS 9.00 percent of customers are COMPECTED AWAY 14.00 percent of customers are HAVING PRODUCT DISSATISFACTION and 68.00 percent of customers are HAVING AN ATTITUDE OF INDIFFERENCE Of EMPLOYEES Prospecting is not a stop gap arrangement or a fire-fighter approach. It is something that goes on and on so long as the business house is interested in creating maintaining and extending the demand for the firms products or the services. No firm on the earth is capable of retaining ill its existing customers though it has multiplied its sales. Hence, new customers are always welcome as old one is likely to discontinue their relations. Building up changing yet guaranteed clientele is the greatest gift of good and constant prospecting.

3. To keep Sales Organization Kicking and Alive:

The sales organization or the selling house is not having control over the environmental changes that are regularly taking place affecting the selling house as a sub-system of the environment – the supra- system. Over the time, changes take place in the size and dimension of new and latest products caused by changing pace of technology changes in channels of marketing – government policies – cultural values – ecological imbalances, competitive forces. These changes have definite impact on consumer behaviour and purchase decision-making. It £ only through close and constant monitoring kept by good prospecting that brings home these strangers for adaptive actions for successful survival.

4. To Rationalise the Approach:

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Prospecting is not a job of rumbling in the jungle. It is not a haphazard or a pell-mell activity. It is a systematic search for the customer starting with a ‘lead’ can ending in ‘prospect’ ^d finally for ‘prospect’ to ‘customer’. It is a meticulous task of screaming and scanning profiting and percolating. Sound prospecting alone helps the salesman to focus and administer his valuable sales-efforts on a selected group of individuals or units. Thus, there is no waste of effort. It is because sales efforts are commensurate with the consumer profile.

5. To bring the Firm and Buyers together:

The old philosophy of business houses was “I will look at you if you look at me.” In present day circumstances it hardly works. Instead, the philosophy should be “I will look at you even if you do not look at me.” It is this philosophy that is hidden in sound prospecting. That is why; all progressive selling houses have gone aggressive and taken prospecting on war footing to locate all potential customers throughout the region or the nation and now the globe. They try to penetrate every nook and corner to establish that there is a firm that caters to the needs of prospects. It is prospecting that binds together the ignorant buyers with updated selling houses ready to bring home the products of science and technology. This is how the customers are located and salesman already pressing the doorbells of really interested but fully or partly unaware customers.

6. To Bolster up the Sales Efforts:

Efficient and effective prospecting is an essential adjunct of sound sales management. Scientifically planned and judiciously implemented prospects plan makes the salesman to know were he should be and what should he do every day, every hour and every minute. It instills orderliness and timeliness in his sales efforts that to in a selected area on a selected prospects at selected time. Planned attack helps him in creating favourable and impinging impression up e d prospects who are in his orbit. It is so because he has done a lot of concentrated and hard time work.

7. To Keep Constantly before Prospects:

Not in all industries or trades that we can expect repeat sales. That is if the selling house prospecting once or after a long gap will not do. That is why; continuous prospecting is a must in most of the trades and industries, for their growth and prosperity. Here, the selling house can not take prospecting once and sleep over for years together. In case of specialty goods in the area of consumer durables and installations and equipments is case of industrial goods, regular prospecting keeps alive true and updated image of the firm, the product and the philosophy behind. It is rightly said, “Out of right out of mind”. No progressive house indulges in such a costly blunder of irregular prospecting.

8. To utilize Time, Treasure and Talent in Optimal way:

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Prospecting is more important in some selling fields than in other. For instance, the stock broker or real estate sales representative with no effective prospecting plan usually does not last longer in the business. In these sales position, as a general rule, it takes 100 contacts to get 10 prospects who will listen to presentations, out of which 1 will buy. Each sale then, represents a great deal of prospecting. It is also important in these fields to prospect continuously. Some sales trainers relates this to your car’s gas line tank. That is, you do not wait until you are on empty before you fill up! That is, prospecting demands sizable amount of firms resources in terms of time, treasure and talent. A scientific prospecting makes possible the best use of resources.