Life in the world of sales and marketing is a passing parade. Atanytime there are a small percentage of potential customers readyto do business with you, and a bigger percentage of customers whoare interested in buying what you sell but are not yet committedto any particular vendor. There is an even bigger group who hasneeds, but is not yet interested. Many of these might become interestedif they were educated about how your product or service can helpthem solve problems they recognize.

Most salespeople, quite rightly, try to focus their attention onfinding the few people who are ready to buy, but in the processmeet countless people who fall into the other categories. Oftenthese names go into a database only to be ignored, or worse stillare discarded.

Remember. Each one represents someone who is potentially interestedin your products or services. This group can represent one of themost valuable but often the most under leveraged asset in your business.

Think of your market like a peach tree. There are some ripefruit that are ready to be picked, and you should do your best topick every one. But what about the rest of the peaches? Youknow that with careful attention, pruning, watering, spraying andfertilizing every peach will ripen and can be harvested at the appropriatetime. It is just the same with marketing, but what most firms do,is leave it to the sales team to pick whatever fruit is ripe. Thesalesperson picks the few ripe ones and then leaves for greenerpastures. The next salesperson who comes along picks a few new onesas they ripen and also leaves. And so it continues. Very few businessesfocus any attention on the prospects that aren’t ready to buy.

Most salespeople have a sense that some of the people they meetalong the way, will buy sometime, so they set up either a ticklerfile or a reminder in their contact manager. Every now and againthey phone the prospect to find out if they are ready. This kindof call is not only ineffective most of the time; it is downrightannoying, as it seldom adds any value. Who among us has time forthe regular, “Are you ready yet call”? Few salespeople ever usethe opportunity to nurture the customer with useful information.Instead they simply become commercial pests.

StreetSmart marketers know that eventually almost every prospectwill ripen and decide to buy. They need education, encouragement,advice and guidance. If you do a good job of this you can pick everyone instead of a few. Use smart marketing to continue to ripenthese customers, and to guard against them going to the competition.Offer them special educational reports, give them ideas on how toimprove their business, invite them to seminars and workshops, andgive them free audio CDs. When they ripen they will let you know,as they will see you as the logical choice and that is when youcan send your salespeople back in to close the sale. It is much cheaperand more effective to have salespeople focus on qualified customers,than continuously foraging for new leads.