What we find is that even the best sales people do not wish to prospect.

When we say that sales people do not want to prospect, we are referring to prospecting for net new accounts.  Prospecting to find all the buyers is a tedious task; finding the User Buyer, the Technical Buyer as well as the Economic Buyer is something that requires tenacity.

Many sales people have a hard enough time prospecting within their own accounts to identify new buyers and new opportunities.

The bottom line is that Prospecting is a separate skill set than Selling.  Most sales people want to be paid to make sales and think that prospecting is a less expensive task but prospecting is crucial to keep your pipe full.

-Updated December 15, 2014, Stephen Zarick, CEO of VO Group