Businessowners, along with everyone else, are growing weary of obnoxious telemarketers with strobe-light personalities, but with neither manners nor listening skills. However, while they may not always like it, most business prospects will talk on the phone if they have a good enough reason, and recognize immediately that they're speaking with a courteous, competent professional.

Because getting in the door is half the sale, your objective in contacting business and professional prospects is to earn the right to meet with the person in a brief Opening or Initial Meeting.

Getting on Your Preferred Prospect's Radar Screen

Prospecting takes too much time and effort to give up after just one attempt at setting a scheduled meeting. The trouble is, in a world awash with junk mail, junk e-mail, junk fax, the telephone and other "culture clutter," you must demonstrate that you are a professional.

Remember, prospects will be looking at you as hard, if not harder, than you're looking at them. Sometimes it takes weeks, even months of building relationships and developing rapport with businessowners and professionals before you can even earn a scheduled meeting. For this reason, you should have plenty of names, a well-oiled follow-up system and be prepared to contact qualified on-profile prospects several times. It's well worth the wait if you use every contact as an opportunity to:

• Build rapport and win your on-profile prospect's confidence. This is a "relationship" business. People like doing business with people they like, who ask insightful questions, know how to listen, and who can spell c-l-i-e-n-t.
• Establish yourself as someone worth listening to. Demonstrate your competence in dealing with your on-profile prospect's needs, wants, objectives and concerns. Always have something new and interesting to talk about.
• Learn more about your on-profile prospect's business and personal situation. The more leverage you have with your prospects and the more you know about their situations and career goals, the easier it is to set scheduled meetings.

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Ohio National is not affiliated with, nor does it endorse or sponsor, any particular prospecting, marketing or selling system.

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