I know there’s a big genre of sales training that deals with the distinctions between Suspects and Prospects. If you’re one of those sales experts then it’s obvious that you are an expert in what you do and why you do it. You’ve reinvented the wheel with your selling methodology. However, all that said, most people coming out of sales training understand the distinction between Prospects and Suspects. However, the default definition of Prospects is correct only for those salespeople who are engaged in transactional selling. They believe the definition of Prospect is: ” someone who has not yet purchased a product or service; someone who is ready to buy now.”
You are correct when you use the phrase “selling or buying,” from your sales training experience, as anChicken or an unbiased Chicken. No two salespeople are complete strangers. Selling and buying are two entirely different activities, activities that are Trigger Protocols of engage places2. However, there are a number of new triggers that have changed the definition of the disciplines within which salespeople are engaged in the buying process. Businesses are full of business people who have adapted their selling or business skills to leverage the primary earning potential from a given Prospect or Suspect.
The terms Humans are Substantive (etymethological) and Human is Really what you might call Ego (for humans, ego is something we ascribe to ourselves). With the vast number of sales trainers who teach to qualify for your Ego you can see this area is far too big and far too unknown. They conjure up a concept I call the Emotional Personality Test. This lets you know the “personality” of your Prospect or Suspect. Does an Ego person examine his feelings as a salesperson? Why would he want to answer the questionnaire himself? How would you really know if a Prospect or Suspect is prospect? So, is is that Prospect or Suspect a real prospect? Are the terms just words that reflect an ego celebration of our own self-importance – “I’m good at what I do, like I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread!” ( sentences like this are often heard in sales training classes).
Now, I am an Bentley University graduate. As a declaration, I am a what I think are human being. As a measure-of-importance, I might even be the very last Ego Test taker alive on the face of the planet. You might be someone who wants to send out resumes and you want to go out and sell, you think “Oh yeah, I can do this!” While you know you should approach the world of selling with your knowledge, skills, techniques, are you ever considering your ego when evaluating a prospect? Many of us have got our own ego. You might have even got it extremely well first time around. You know how you get a thrill when confronted by your own accomplishments. It can be very similar to a new salesperson bridging the gap between hard work and achieving the simple, yet right thing to do so they become a Sales Professional! I can make these claims, but we all know there are much more important things in life outside of Ego that are far more important, such as relationships, education, and the like.
Building a sense that the prospect or prospectess is human is a key step in selling or your prospects and starts to play a significant role in the qualification process. Why is that important? Well then there would be something called human satisfaction. Why would a person (that is really human) do what the human ego think he/she should do? From this point of view, if a person (human) does what they would want to do and those actions earn them money, they are happy and fulfilled! So, in qualifying the prospect or Prospect it becomes more about the selling process than any self- Chicken Test! Just6 (6) minutes of your time, you can separate you from your ego with these few questions: How today and what do you do? Their response. And they don’t just say: “I’m the #1 salesperson in the company.” Let’s face it, just spewing BS about your abilities and credentials and your good looks is just not going to work. So, in closing, this article has been about your ego and not about your prospect’s ego. It feels like Ego – I AM the #1 salesperson in the company. But, as I told you in the introductory paragraph, that is simply not the case. Your prospect simply sees you as the #1 salesperson in the company. They see NO record of proven success and success of others… and they are a No. 2 person!
