Preston Adams has just completed the sales training program for the Office Copier Company $($OCC$).$ Adams has been assigned a territory in Illinois that includes the metro areas of Bloomington, Decatur, and Peoria. The company once commanded a significant market share in these markets. However, due to a problem with a previous salesperson in these markets three years ago, OCC has not been directly working this particular region of central Illinois. Although there is a large number of their machines still in use across this territory, it has been a while since a salesperson has called on any accounts. As with any geographic area, there have likely been a lot of changes with existing companies moving or even going out of business and new companies opening up$.$

Current Situation

Adams$$s sales manager, Eric Waits, is coming in two weeks to spend three days in the field with Adams calling on prospective accounts. Adams is working to develop a list of leads that he can qualify and then contact in order to set up the sales calls he will be making with his manager.

Role Play

Situation: Read the Role Play Prospecting and Gaining Prospect Information.

Characters: Preston Adams, salesperson for OCC; Jerri Spencer, office manager with purchasing responsibilities for Peoria$-$based McKelvey and Walters, Attorneys$-$at$-$Law.

Scene:

Location$$Preston Adams's office at OCC.

Action$$In the course of Adams's prospecting activities, Spencer and the McKelvey and Walters law firm have come up as a strong prospect for Xerox's new line of professional copiers. McKelvey and Walters operate a large office in Peoria that occupies most of two floors in the Planter's Bank Building and a branch office in Bloomington. They were previously a customer of OCC, but the information that Adams has obtained indicates that they are using an unspecified variety of different brands of copiers.

Role play the phone conversation between Adams and Spencer as Adams introduces himself and his company to Spencer, gathers needed information to better qualify the prospect, and asks for an appointment for an initial sales call.

Chapter $5$ Continuing Case

Fishing for New Customers

Brenda Smith has been very successful at getting existing customers to upgrade or purchase new copiers during the past two months. She is$,$ however, disappointed in her efforts to get new customers. In order to add more new customers, Brenda has been spending a great deal of time prospecting. These efforts have produced a large number of leads. Once she generates a lead, she contacts the firm and tries to set up an appointment. Unfortunately, most of these leads are not interested in talking about copiers and are not willing to schedule a meeting with her. This has been so frustrating that she decided to make several cold calls this week to see if this would be a good way to get to meet with prospective customers. The cold calls were also not very successful and were extremely time consuming. Brenda did finally get a few leads to agree to meet with her, but these appointments were not very productive. The leads were typically satisfied with the copiers they were using and were not interested in learning about NCC copiers.

Pat Brady, her sales manager, accompanied her on a recent sales call to a lead. After the sales call, Pat expressed his disappointment that they had really wasted their time with this meeting. Pat then asked Brenda about her prospecting process, because it was clear that she was not identifying and spending her time with the best sales opportunities. Her approach was not working well and was taking a lot of time. If she continued doing the same things, Brenda was not likely to generate many new customers and might lose some existing customers, because she was spending too much of her time prospecting.

Brenda realizes that she must improve her prospecting process, but is not sure exactly how to proceed.

Questions

What is Brenda doing wrong? What would you recommend Brenda do to improve her prospecting efforts?