Cold Calling is the start of the sales cycle where we make calls to potential prospects which are cold and might not even have a requirement for the product or service we are calling them about.

In the early days of the sales profession cold calling was very commonly accepted as one of the only methods to find potential prospects but with the introduction of the internet along with marketing professionals or data sellers it has become less frequently used in many sales departments around the world.

If you call a number and don’t know who you intend to speak with or if they have a requirement for your product or services then it is a cold call, if you call a number and know the name of the person and know he potentially has a requirement then this is known as sales prospecting.

Sales prospecting is the search for new potential clients who might be interested to invest in your product or services. Some people relate prospecting to just cold calling or telemarketing but prospecting can actually be broken down into many areas, all of which should end in you having the contact details of a potential client or two.

Sales prospecting usually comes 2nd in the sales cycle behind cold calling or telemarketing but this varies from company to company depending on how leads are actually generated. If a business is purchasing leads from a database then they can either be a non-targetted list of businesses making them very cold and unprospected or they could be targetted making them more like a ready made prospect.

It would be great to hear opinions from other sales professionals about your own definitions of sales prospecting via the Leave a Reply area below, so we can learn more about how it differs from business to business.

David

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David White