Step One: Building a customer profile is a key step. You need to devote some of your time and energy on potential customers that would best suite your line of business. Ask yourself what is the difference between your best and your worst performing customers. What are their demographics and what organizations are they part of? Perhaps by knowing a little more information about your potential customer, you will be better able to position your product and close your sale with ease.

Step Two: Talking to your customer is an important process in qualifying them as a valuable client. What is their Budget? What is their buying cycle? Are they currently under contract with another supplier? Who makes the buying decisions? Properly qualifying your customer will make it easier for you to position your product to them… in fact it will even help you decide if you should focus on them at all.

Step Three:Prospect by referrals! Word of mouth advertising is worth more than gold these days. Chances are you once had some work done on your car or house at some point and were so please with the result that you passed that persons information on to a friend or co-worker. The same can be done for you! The important thing to remember is that you need to surprise them with a level of service that they are not accustomed to in order for them to spread the word about you.

Step Four:Set up a schedule and follow it. Set aside a portion of your day for prospecting, a portion for admin and follow up work, and another portion of your day for building a prospecting list for the next day. After two-weeks of this routine you will stick to it out of habit. Keep this up for at least 6 months and see the results!

Step Five: Stick with what works best for you. Once you have a set method that delivers proven results it is best to keep going down the same path. Do not reinvent the wheel. Do not fix it if it isn’t broken. Once you find a system that works… use it!

Step Six:Set goals for yourself. What do you want? How much do you want to earn this year? How much do you want to earn next year? How many new accounts do you want to add this month? You need to remember that if you do not have a set target in mind you are fighting an uphill battle.

Step Seven:Qualify your customer! Chances are there is more than one opportunity that your customer can give you. Take the I.T. industry for example. Let’s say you just sold the customer 50 desktop computers. What about the servers that they may need to upgrade? What about the network cabling? What about the monitors? What about the software? What about the printers? What about the toner for those printers? What about the …? Remember, every sale leads to another and you must qualify the sale to ensure that you are offering the big picture.

Step Eight:Develop your prospects. Having a prospect is worthless unless you convert them into a customer. You will need to follow up with them on a regular basis in order to stay in the forefront of their mind. This step is crucial. Remember, there are countless other sales people just like you that prospect the same leads that you do on a daily basis. What makes you stand out from the crowd? If you do not keep in touch with your prospect you can be sure that someone else is… and that person does not pay your bills.

Step Nine: Consistency is important. No matter how bogged down with admin work you are, you must always make time to prospect for new leads. If you never prospect you will just maintain your current income… or even reduce your income. IF you want to grow you must make time to grow.

Step Ten: Maintain a database. You can’t expect to remember everything about all of your clients… all of the time. Using CRM software will allow you to keep track of all of the information that you have collected about your customers and prospects. Without good CRM software all other steps are null and void…

Written By Jeremiah Walsh from SalesFist