2 proven ways to create more business opportunities and improve prospecting

If prospecting is the lifeblood of selling, what are you doing this year to generate more business opportunities this year and build your sales pipeline?

In this article, I would love to share with you 2 proven ways to create more business opportunities for yourself and your organization and increase your sales significantly. And they are to GENERATE new opportunities of solving your customers' unknown problems or to IDENTIFY opportunities which already exist in the market and learn ways to pitch your products/services better than your competitors.

Generate new opportunities: While this approach might take up more effort and time at the beginning, it tends to reap remarkable results in the long run. As you invest time and effort to study your customer's industry and market, learning to identify what their hidden or existing problems are (you will need to have the solution to their problems too), your customers will end up seeing you as a consultant rather than just another salesperson or vendor. Moreover this means your customers are more likely willing to pay you a premium for what you have to offer since they need you and value your "expertise".

For instance, if you are an insurance agent, instead of just running through your day-to-day prospecting and setting appointments with your customers to conduct a "standard sales presentation", think about the problems that you might be able to solve for others that they may not even be aware of at the present moment. I remember this was exactly what my friend did when he created a new market for his insurance business more than a year ago. Instead of targeting the mass market, he decided to refocus his attention on finding ways to solve the common challenges of a group of people whom he identified as his target audience. Today, he is thriving in the market because he is perceived as an expert who is able to offer solution to his customers' problems.

Remember that today we are living in an era where relationship selling by itself will no longer guarantee sales success! We need to find ways to differentiate ourselves from the competition and be perceived as the expert who is able to best solve our customers' problems. And this is what generating new opportunities are all about.

Identify existing opportunities: Unlike the first approach that we discussed earlier in this article, this is the approach where we may tend to see results faster. Instead of having to "educate" our customers about the hidden problems they have, here our customers are already conscious of the problems they are facing and are actively seeking solutions to resolve them. Thus, our main role here is to approach our customers and present to them the benefits of our offering and more importantly, WHY they should choose us over our competitors. What is your differentiating value proposition and what makes you special?

At the end of the day, success in modern selling requires you to master both these strategies of generating and identifying new business opportunities. For the higher "G.I." you have, the better your sales performance is likely going to be.

Celebrating your Awesomeness, Jacky Lim.