Top 10 ways to fail at prospecting

You’ve become an expert at the right things to keep your prospecting file full of potential customers, right? Or are you a victim of self-defeating strategies? Here’s a “please do not do these” list of the 10 worst prospecting routes, to be avoided at all costs.

1. Failing to ask for testimonials and maintain a list of satisfied customers willing to act as references.
2. Failing to qualify prospects before you approach them.
3. Not including an upfront, attention-getting, call to action in your communications.
4. Neglecting to target your communications to specific segments of prospects.
5. Focusing on your services rather than on the prospect’s benefits.
6. Having an unprepared elevator speech with the benefits of your product or service tailored to the specific prospect with whom you are meeting.
7. Bad follow-up, including not following up at all, waiting too long before contacting the prospect again, and following up too much, or too often.
8. Failing to determine the prospect’s business problem and thereby not selling with a solution-oriented focus.
9. Being unprepared at the initial meeting with no background research on your prospect.
10. Over-promising a service you are not sure you can deliver.