The word “prospects” has been a part of the sales and marketing vocabulary for a long time.  Just about everyone uses the word to describe “all of the people that they would eventually like to do business with” but currently are not.  Putting everyone into one bucket like this is a little sloppy, and we recommend that our customers do it a different way.

We like to break down this pool of people into Suspects and Prospects:

Suspects are anyone that meets the demographic criteria of someone we would want to spend some sales and marketing effort on – size, industry, location, revenues, etc.  As far as we know, however, these people have never heard of our business, and have never indicated any interest in buying from us.

Prospects, on the other hand, meet the demographic criteria mentioned above, but have also met one or more of the following criteria:

• Engaged in some sort of conversation with us
• Have indicated interest in what we have to offer, although the specific time frame and budget is not yet clear or even short term (that would make them an opportunity)
• Have agreed to have us keep in touch with them
• Have in the past or are currently purchasing similar products and services from a competitor of ours

As you can see, there is a real difference between Suspects and Prospects.  Suspects are the greater universe of potential customers that could be a fit, whereas Prospects are further along – they have some strong indicators that they should be a fit.

Why is this distinction important to understand in your sales and marketing process?  For the following reasons:

1. The message that you should use with Suspects is different than that of Prospects.  With Suspects, it’s all about finding out if they have any interest, whereas with Prospects it’s about stoking the fires of that interest and trying to move them into opportunities.
2. The media you use to reach Suspects and Prospects may at times be different.  The universe of Suspects is often times very large, so you need to reach them in a very cost-effective manner – making email and search marketing a great choice.  Once you’ve narrowed down to a smaller list of Prospects, you may choose to do larger direct mail pieces, or make calls from senior business development personnel.
3. The budget you apply to Suspects should be different than that toward Prospects.  You can and should spend much more on a qualified Prospect than you should on a Suspect, as you know they have indicated some real interest in your products and services.  If you over spend on Suspects, you’ll spend yourself right out of business!
4. The expectations of your marketing should be different with Suspects and Prospects.  Marketing to Suspects will just get the sales and marketing process started – you can’t expect them to jump out of their seat to buy services from you on the first email they receive.  It takes time!  You also shouldn’t expect that every Suspect is going to become a Prospect – only a relatively small percentage will every raise their hand to say “I’m interested”.  For this reason, you need to keep refreshing and building the list of Suspects in your marketing funnel to give you a new and larger pool to market to.  That being said, once you have a good list of Prospects that you’ve nurtured, you should expect to start to see measurable movement and progress in your sales pipeline.

Understanding the difference between Suspects and Prospects will allow you to better fine tune your sales and marketing approach, and give you the right expectations for your efforts.

Mike