{"id":32,"date":"2012-09-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/27\/thougthful-thursdays-getting-in-the-door\/"},"modified":"2019-04-03T07:54:27","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T11:54:27","slug":"thougthful-thursdays-getting-in-the-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/27\/thougthful-thursdays-getting-in-the-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Thougthful Thursdays &#8211; Getting in the door"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A common&nbsp;obstacle faced by sales representatives is getting their foot in the door of a prospect.&nbsp;I encounter it myself, but far less frequently now then in the past.<\/p>\n<p>To what do I attribute the higher level of success in gaining access to prospects? It is not a single behaviour or approach, but&nbsp;the&nbsp;utilization of a combination of tools available to develop an approach that&nbsp;increases the probability of success.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a&nbsp;couple&nbsp;of&nbsp;habits I have found useful:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do&nbsp;the homework\n<ul>\n<li>make sure that your prospect is in your target market<\/li>\n<li>are they direct competition with any of your other customers?<\/li>\n<li>research the prospects business<\/li>\n<li>get a contact name<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Check in with your network\n<ul>\n<li>does anyone you know have contacts with the prospect?<\/li>\n<li>has anyone you know dealing\/dealt with your prospect?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Be prepared to leave voice messages and multiple follow up calls&nbsp;if contacting by telephone.<\/li>\n<li>Know what you are going to say before you say it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If your prospect is in your target market, you have every reason to believe they will be interested in what you have to say.&nbsp;If you find a high percent of your target market is not interested, you may need to take a step back and examine your market research findings. That is a marketing discussion for another day.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, be organized and persistent. Stay engaged and know that it may take several attempts before you get to talk to or see the person you want to. If you have a product or service that truly will help&nbsp;your prospects business, it&nbsp;will&nbsp;only be a matter of time before you are in the door and taking their order.<\/p>\n<p>Good selling,<br \/>\nRichard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A common&nbsp;obstacle faced by sales representatives is getting their foot in the door of a prospect.&nbsp;I encounter it myself, but far less frequently now then in the past. To what do I attribute the higher&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/27\/thougthful-thursdays-getting-in-the-door\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,5,8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sales","category-sales-call-planning","category-sales-tips","category-selling-skills","category-thoughtful-thursdays"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3464,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions\/3464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sakanashiandassociates.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}