Sales Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide To Referral Prospecting, Social Contact Marketing, Telephone Prospecting, And Cold Calling To Find Highly Likely Prospects You Can Close In One Call

I'm giving Claude four stars for this one largely due to the pragmatic nature of his approach. I am a sole proprietor...which means I am also my "sales force." There are no clients unless I go out and get them. A cornerstone of Claude's approach is making a LOT of contact with a LOT of prospects:"Phone faster.. in 1 hours time you’ll get a couple of solid appointments if you phone fast. Then you’ll say, “Wow, this works”. If you call only a few every hour, it will feel like you never get an appointment. “It doesn’t work.. I called for a whole hour!”. Phone faster."Now, the only CHALLENGE with that...if you want to use a list of pre-qualified prospects rather than the Yellow Pages shotgun approach...is that you either have to purchase the list or compile it yourself. Decent, "scrubbed" lists cost a lot of money. Do-it-yourself lists are the best, because you can be assured of their accuracy before you pick up the phone or walk in, but it takes many, many hours to come up with even the smallest of lists. That's true of what I do...Web Design. For your product or service it might take more time, it might take less.Claude doesn't really offer a solution for that obstacle, he just assumes you're reading the book on the other side of it. He does offer a few list sources, but sometimes a low budget means no budget, and when it comes to "free" list brokers, you get what you pay for. Unless you can afford the best list available, you really are better off investing the sweat equity and compiling it yourself.What I like BEST about Claude's philosophy...the source of my 4 star rating overall for the book...is his "care while not caring" principle. You have to care enough to pick up the phone or hit the streets, yes. But you have to immunize yourself against "caring" about prospects who don;t want what you have to offer. That's where most salespeople slow down or stop...they take the rejection personally, which is foolish, because it's never really a "personal" exchange with a prospect on first contact anyway, unless you're coming to them via a referral.This is a book for WORKING salespeople...he's not teaching any tricks or gimmicks here. It's more "old school" than some of the modern sales gurus like Jeffrey Gitomer. I would not say that this is the one and only book on sales that you should own. I would say that you should own it, that you should learn as much from it as you can, and add it to the well-rounded knowledge you have gained from other sources. Study the "sales dogs" like the immortal Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. Get a couple of Gitomer books like "The Sales Bible" and "The Little Red Selling." Add Claude's expertise to that mix and you will be one empowered individual, ready for success.

Some of the best sales books I've ever read were recommended by this guy, so I thought it was time to check his material out - I wasn't disappointed and picked up some real gems inside it. He did a far better job of explaining how to make referrals work than many other books I've read - too many just say ask for the name after the sale, but that's usually not enough. Really excellent advice on that topic. My only point of contention is the philosophy of only going for 'low hanging fruit' - clearly Claude has found a way to make this work! My issue is that low hanging fruit is only so plentiful, a much bigger market is the 'high hanging fruit'. In sales, these people are the people who need your product, are qualified to buy it, but aren't yet aware of their need for it. My eyes about this were viciously ripped open by a book called 'Secrets of Question Based Selling' - which has a philosophy of going after the higher hanging fruit. One very important thing to point out: Claude is very local sales oriented, when he sells B2B, he's selling to small businesses. You can really divide B2B sales into two sub-categories, big and small, and they are very different animals from gatekeepers to decision makers. His approach to cold calling I found rather interesting, because even with his cold calling strategy, he's still going for the low hanging fruit, but he uses some really solid tactics for getting through and closing on appointments fast - I highlighted a ton of text in my Kindle!The bottom line is this: If your in a sales slump and need to move fast (and are willing to move fast) - this book will really do the trick. If you need help with making referrals work, this book will do the trick. If your trying to expand your market, this isn't the book - that's a 'high hanging fruit' topic, which isn't covered in here.

Pretty good info & suggestions.

I never thought I'd ever say I love a book about cold calling, but this one really deserves it.The fact is, I've been looking for books on cold calling for a while, because I want to expand my client base FAST, but they all seemed to be too complicated - and intimidating. Or too involved, with too much lead time involved, or costly "lumpy mail" to be sent first, too many different scripts to use, and so on.And then I found Claude Whitacre's book...What seemed to be complicated and intimidating before now feels more like a "just do it" task. He shows us how to quickly sort through the people who are not interested to get to the few that are. And sell to THOSE. For the first time ever, I'm actually kind of excited about cold calling.I started reading this book on my Kindle and kept bookmarking pages, but halfway through, I decided to switch to the cloud version and go back in order to simply create a cheat sheet for myself - copying over the key scripts I'd be using. Now I have just a few pages to print out and I'll be ready to get to work.The book doesn't stop with cold calling either. There's excellent info on how to get referrals AND on how to network effectively, complete with a highly effective template for elevator pitches with the same elegant simplicity as his cold calling approach.This book rocks! If you're trying to find more clients and are open to cold calling, I bet you'll love it too!

Found Claude online, bought the book.The learnt a lot , learn to earn. Now I have qualified referrals which make it an easy sell. Thank you

Claud has a lifetime of experience for us to draw on and comes from a tough sales discipline.I found the book highly informative and had so many practical tips that had an immediate effect on my sales presentations and resultant sales.A recommended buy! +++

Have to say, simple as it sounds, ask for referrals... works. Increased my leads and have a couple of sales I didn't expect.

As someone who is looking to learn about propsecting over the phone etc, I found this to be very helpful. Even has script ideas for you to use.

The author has learned everything in the trenches, he started as a door to door vacuum cleaner sales rep, later he got his own sales team. He has been doing cold calling for several years, but step by step he discovered there are much easier ways to sell. He talks about referrals, which ones will bring you new customers and how to ask for them. His favorite method is following the competition, because where the other sales reps sold something, he has also good chance. Another method is upselling, for example if somebody buys carpet, he will also need vacuum cleaner.Unlike most books about sales, there is no theory, this is practical step by step blueprint, what to say, what to do and how to do it.