So, often salesmen miss the point of getting to know the prospect and learning of their passions, priorities and interests. In doing so they miss why the prospect is hesitant to entering talks or moving forward into the sales process. If you are a sales person you need to be sure to understand your prospect and not be too quick to pigeon hole them into a category that you perceive or a profile that you believe that they best fit into.

In my 27 years in business and putting together direct marketing teams to get new business to sign up for our services each time we opened a new franchise unit somewhere in some state; I always noticed the need to explain to the sales force that they should not too quickly pre-judge prospects but rather listen to them and figure out if in fact they needed what we were selling or were even interested.

If not it was best to smile and perhaps ask them if they knew of someone who was and sure enough 4 times out of five they would know someone who was interested in what we were selling. Yet, had the salesperson categorized the prospect too soon, determined they were of no value they would never have gotten all those great referral leads which so often ended up in sales and good ones too I might add. Consider all this in 2006.