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Tighten Your Prospecting Filter

Win Fast, Lose Faster

4/12/2022 | Roger Burnett, CAS, The Burn

“I sell to everyone,” is one of the most common replies I get when I ask industry peers who it is they target as their markets of choice.

Here’s the problem with that.

When you truly believe your ability to serve is not focused on any specific market, it significantly inhibits your productivity for countless reasons. Even though the “I sell to everyone” statement may be true, unless you’ve created a vast library of solutions you’ve used to help clients in numerous markets solve specific problems, the likelihood of you being able to quickly and effectively deliver products that meet your clients and prospects needs is relatively small. Add in the myriad supply-chain woes we’re all suffering through and you’re even more unlikely to be able to source those products you may have historically used to solve those client problems.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

One of the easiest ways to determine if you are unconsciously serving groups of buyers with commonality is to investigate your order data. By looking at the orders you’ve done over the last week/month/year, you give yourself the opportunity to look for clues as to where those areas of specialty might be hiding.

Here are some filters to apply when performing the analysis:

  1. Are you consistently selling products from a specific category? (Are you unknowingly the “hat guy”? Do you gravitate to drinkware as the product you sell most frequently?)

  2. Are there date-driven events for which you have a knack for finding and delivering product to support?

  3. Do many of your best relationships feature an e-commerce enabled platform to conduct transactions? Do you thrive selling to organizations with employees of a single company spread out over large geographic areas?

  4. Does your child or other family member participate in activities for which that group seeks out your merchandise help?

  5. Do you really love a specific color and find yourself pitching products from your favorite color palate with any frequency?

All of these would be considered areas of specialty, but often we disallow ourselves the opportunity to consider them as such because we worry that focusing on narrow lanes like these would somehow limit our overall selling capability and might cause us to miss out on orders from other businesses who may not want or need products from any of the areas of specialty as outlined above.

Here's the catch to that self-limiting belief.

If you’re meeting a new prospect, your efforts should primarily revolve around determining which of the areas of specialty you’ve developed might benefit this prospect the most. By using this filter during the discovery phase of your encounter, you supercharge your prospecting efforts by allowing yourself to pull from the areas of expertise you’ve developed as you grow this market specialty and create an opportunity to serve your clients more quickly than you would if you have to restart the creative process with each new opportunity. Approaching your business with that kind of restart with every new relationship is not only exhausting (especially when finding product these days is as difficult as it is), but it’s not scalable. You only have a set number of hours to devote to new business development and approaching the work from scratch every single time will significantly limit your ability to grow your sales line. Trust me…I know from experience.


By reimaging your prospecting questions to help uncover clients who you most reliably serve, you’re tightening your prospecting filter  to give yourself the best opportunity possible to deliver tried-and-true solutions you’ve used to solve the same issue for other clients. By rearranging your process to look for those with the problems you solve best, it hyper-accelerates your ability to find and serve the clients who will most appreciate that which you do, which often diminishes the need for price negotiation, and gives you the chance to add that many more clients to your roster.


Roger has spent 20+ years making complex concepts more understandable for both buyers and sellers alike, and has devoted the majority of his recent career to injecting purpose via philanthropy to his sales and marketing efforts. He’s intent on making the world a better place and his nirvana exists at the intersection of Mission, Passion, Profession and Vocation. He loves the outdoors and seeks memorable experiences whenever possible. Contact Roger at roger@socialgoodpromotions.com or 810-986-5369.
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