Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success

Whatever good or service you're selling, five likely customers are worth a hundred random names. No one can help you find new business by finding those five -- or five hundred, or fifty thousand -- best-qualified customers better than Bill Good.

For over a decade, Bill Good's guide to increasing new business by finding the right prospective customers has been an invaluable resource to people in every imaginable profession involving selling. Now completely revised and updated to include lessons on how email, fax machines, and the Internet can be incorporated into an effective prospecting and selling campaign, it is the most valuable tool a salesperson can own.

Anyone who does any prospecting or selling by phone -- from securities, insurance, and real estate to fund-raising -- knows the frustrations and rejections inherent in "cold calling." Many people come to fear it. But why should this be so? Certainly there are people out there who need and want the product you're selling. If only you could more efficiently generate a list of just those people, weed out the hopeless cases, and launch a simple and highly effective campaign to win them to your side. Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success shows you how to do just that. Bill Good draws on all he's learned from a long, successful career teaching companies and individual entrepreneurs how to create successful prospecting campaigns. He jettisons the stale, old-school, don't-believe-a-customer-who-says-no philosophy for a plan of attack that finds good prospects while quickly screening out unqualified, uninterested customers. From the first contact to the final close, Bill Good will help you design a complete, customized prospecting campaign.

In this new revised edition, bursting with fresh ideas for incorporating new media and new technologies into his proven campaign strategies, Bill Good has updated a classic and given salespeople everywhere a book they can't afford to live without.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

The best book on cold calling and prospecting for salespeople by far, 2007-10-28
This is a book that surprised me. Based on the age of this book I expected tired and old advice on cold calling and other overworked concepts discussed ad nauseam in every sales book. Instead I got a solid system of prospecting with excellent advice, techniques, and tools. This book covers all the bases from list acquisition to script writing and record keeping but most importantly the author changes prospecting from grueling to pleasurable. "Old School" prospecting was hard because it was based on overcoming rejection and a mind-numbing process of quantity over quality. Old School Prospecting was about verbally beating on a prospect until they capitulate: that buyers are liars, each no leads to a yes, and that you need at least 10 no's to get a yes.

Bill Good says, "Prospecting and selling are two entirely different subjects. Prospecting gets rid of; selling keeps. Prospecting takes an easy no. On the other hand, once a salesperson is convinced someone is a good prospect and should own the product or service, selling does not take an easy no." Good has a better system: that buyers tell the truth and if they're not interested simply say "Thankyouverymuch" and call the next person. Bill Good writes with humor and warmth. He has been in the trenches with us and his savvy, wisdom, experience all come through.

While an update of the book to include CRM instead of index cards might be useful, this is a solid helpful book on prospecting. Very few books exist on prospecting which is what I consider the most important part of selling. This book sits on my short shelf of must have sales books, along with "Selling Against the Goal," "Value Forward Selling," and "Selling to Big Companies." There are many books on cold calling such as "Red Hot Cold Calling" and "Cold Calling for Dummies", even books on "Never Cold Call Again. Bill Good's book "Prospecting" is the best--the best by far!



2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

VERY GOOD, 2006-06-25
The book is extremely good because it shows how to keep the salesman on his toes instead of getting complacent and losing the 'touch' by becoming more of a computer person.

If you are in direct one-to-one selling - get this book!

SATPAL


7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

Sales as a system, 2005-10-23
Have you ever heard the sales war stories that start off,
"Charlie just landed a big account at X company. I talked to them six months ago and they weren't ready to buy. I was going to call them back but now Charlie is in there."

If you follow the techniques in Bill Good's Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success, that won't happen to you. (unless your name is Charlie!)

Bill Good offers a systematic approach to managing your contacts, leads and prospects in a red-hot to luke-warm priority system. It also does something that many sales managers I've worked with are reluctant to do. Stop approaching the rude non-prospect jerks who beat you up, move on to more professional prospects.

Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success will allow you to do just that.

Use Bill Good's system for prospecting and managing prospects and you will increase your sales.


3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

Very Good Tools, 2005-02-21
I have used the teachings of Bill Good and this book to build a successful financial services business. It is highly recommended.


8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

I made an extra $10,000.00 the second month after reading, 2004-09-01
I'm in heavy equipment sales. No I'm not a shill as the moronic idiot wrote in one of the previous reviews giving this top shelf sales book only one star. I am however a top salesman of equipment and I have to say that after using just one of the great ideas that this man has to offer I was able to generate an additional ten grand in income. Not a fluke. The hard won sales savvy that this man has given to this book is worth its weight in gold. Buy it. Read it. But most of all USE IT! It has been several years since my purchase but I refer to it again and again. I can think of no other book I have read in my sales career that has had the impact this one has on my income and my approach to database driven selling and marketing.

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