According to Anthony J. Urbaniak, a prospect is a person or institution that can both benefit from buying the product or service and afford to buy it. The process of identifying good prospects is called "qualifying" the prospect.
1. The person or organization must be able to benefit from the product or service; those who have no use for it are not qualified prospects.
2. Also, no matter how badly a prospect may want the product or how much they can benefit from it, if they cannot afford it, they are not qualified prospects.
Once you have identified a list of good prospects, or leads, the qualifying process begins in earnest. The qualifying process can be divided into two basic stages: pre-call research that will help you begin to develop a profile of the needs, interests and capabilities of your prospect, followed by creating the best strategy for the manner in which you will conduct the initial contact with the prospect. In the end, you can't be 100% certain the prospect is qualified until you begin to interact with your contact. The art and science of cold calling relies heavily on strategies for making this initial call.
Developing a Contact Tree
Sometimes sales reps overlook the fact that developing an effective contact list plays out in stages. The goal, of course, is to get in front of the decision maker, but in many cases that person may be shielded from calls like yours.
