The best sales professionals are experts at telling the difference between a prospect and a suspect

The best salespeople use the terms “prospect” and “suspect” to help them differentiate a consumer who has become aware of your business and is entering your sales process.  They do this to protect their time.  In the beginning, each potential customer is either a prospect or suspect as they begin to consider your product or service.

A prospect is someone who responds to your reasons why they should become interested in you.  If they are interested, they will follow the “purchase decision funnel.”  If you fail to create interest or they stop engaging with you, it’s because they don’t see reasons to consider your business further, and they return to being non-interested consumers.  If they hold back for more information and continue to keep after you for more and more information, they are more than likely a “suspect.”

Suspects are people who meet your target customer criteria and who have indicated an interest in buying from your business.  The challenge with suspects centers on how they start out looking like prospects and yet never buy from you.  Suspects take up your time, always expecting more information yet never acting on what you give them.

Like suspects, prospects also meet your target customer criteria.  What’s different is that they have indicated more than a passing interest in what you have to offer.  By entering into and then continuing in a dialogue with you to learn more about how you can help them is how you tell a prospect from a suspect.

Suspects will permit you to keep in touch with them, but they never become a serious prospect, one that you can convert into a customer.  The problem with sales suspects is they don’t wear a sign that says, “don’t waste your time on me.”  On the contrary, they will behave in the same ways as a sales prospect.  As a result, you will waste time, money, and scarce resources trying to convince them to buy from you.

You protect yourself from suspects by developing indicator criteria that help you differentiate prospects from suspects.  One fundamental way to do this is to involve them in your sales process.  Interested sales prospects will engage with you consistently, while suspects will only engage with you as long as it’s “safe.”

Prospects will share, Suspects remain guarded

Here’s an easy way to separate a suspect from a prospect: ask them to share with you something about themselves or their business, perhaps something that is not publicly known, which will help you lead them to the best solution for their problem.  Prospects genuinely interested in you and your product will typically see the value in sharing such information.  Suspects will not.

Suspects are consumers you don’t want to invest a lot of your limited time and resources in serving.  Of course, you always want to be polite, approachable, and project a professional image.  Beyond this effort, it’s best to redirect the suspect to have more time for your prospects.  Sometimes it is a good practice to say, “Perhaps you will be better served by…”  Not everyone is a perfect fit for your business.  When they need your product, they will remember that you did not try to force sell them but referred them to someone else.

With suspects, it’s about finding out if they have any interest in what you have to offer, whereas with prospects, it’s about further developing and defining that interest as you work to turn them into customers.

If you struggle with telling the difference between a prospect and a suspect, click here to better appreciate how you develop the reason to believe in what you do.  Prospects will show themselves by being interested in your customer value proposition, whereas suspects will only want to challenge the value you are trying to offer them.