Qualifying Prospects

I recently had a phone conversation with a new distributor. He said he spent hours on a proposal for what he thought was a good prospect, only to have it go nowhere. He was wondering what could have gone wrong.

Here’s what may have happened…

Many years ago, when I first started selling promotional products, I thought everyone was a good prospect for me. Consequently, I wasted a lot of time and energy on the wrong prospects. Prospects only looking for the lowest price, or worse, prospects who didn’t have the ability or authority to order or who were just window shoppers. After a while I learned to pre-qualify my prospects.