Part One The Fundamentals of Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting

When approaching someone who might be a candidate to become

a customer of your company, you are making a cold call.

The most difficult kind of cold call is when the person you approach:

• Has never heard of your company.

• Doesn’t believe he or she has any use for your product or

service.

• Seems to be annoyed that you are bothering him.

The best kind of cold call is when the person you approach:

• Knows your company.

• Knows something about your product or service.

• Knows that he or she has a need.

• Has heard about you.

• Had meant to call you.

Put gold stars on the days when you call one of those people.

They are priceless and need to be cherished.

But a cold call actually is just one step—a late step—in a

larger process called prospecting. Prospecting begins when we

start asking questions like, “Whom should we call in the first

place?” “What can we learn about these people and their

needs before we make our cold calls?” “How should we approach

them?” “How can we otherwise increase the chances

that a cold call will be successful?”

In other words, a successful cold call is the payoff in a series

of activities that add up to successful prospecting. The ultimate

goal of all prospecting activities is to create and enable successful

cold calls.

In Part One, we are going to discuss how you can prepare

to succeed at cold calling. That means we’ll talk about the larger

process of prospecting—such as how to define your purpose and

your prospecting goals. We’ll explain the fundamentals of Knock

Your Socks Off Prospecting.

There isn’t a lot of preliminary work to do, but these preliminaries

will have a huge impact on your success. Remember your

Mom saying, “If you are going to do something, you might as well

do it right?” Mom wasn’t talking about prospecting, but she may

as well have been. The next thirteen chapters will help prepare

you for Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting.

When approaching someone who might be a candidate to become

a customer of your company, you are making a cold call.

The most difficult kind of cold call is when the person you approach:

• Has never heard of your company.

• Doesn’t believe he or she has any use for your product or

service.

• Seems to be annoyed that you are bothering him.

The best kind of cold call is when the person you approach:

• Knows your company.

• Knows something about your product or service.

• Knows that he or she has a need.

• Has heard about you.

• Had meant to call you.

Put gold stars on the days when you call one of those people.

They are priceless and need to be cherished.

But a cold call actually is just one step—a late step—in a

larger process called prospecting. Prospecting begins when we

start asking questions like, “Whom should we call in the first

place?” “What can we learn about these people and their

needs before we make our cold calls?” “How should we approach

them?” “How can we otherwise increase the chances

that a cold call will be successful?”

In other words, a successful cold call is the payoff in a series

of activities that add up to successful prospecting. The ultimate

goal of all prospecting activities is to create and enable successful

cold calls.

In Part One, we are going to discuss how you can prepare

to succeed at cold calling. That means we’ll talk about the larger

process of prospecting—such as how to define your purpose and

your prospecting goals. We’ll explain the fundamentals of Knock

Your Socks Off Prospecting.

There isn’t a lot of preliminary work to do, but these preliminaries

will have a huge impact on your success. Remember your

Mom saying, “If you are going to do something, you might as well

do it right?” Mom wasn’t talking about prospecting, but she may

as well have been. The next thirteen chapters will help prepare

you for Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting.