Ever go to sales heaven in a dream?

You know the place — everyone you speak to, or everyone on your e-mail list buys from you… they all buy the first time they meet you… all the orders stick, and they all move up your sales funnel, almost instantly.

Nice place to be, isn’t it?

Only two problems with sales heaven: One, you have to die to get there… and two, there’s no merchant account.

Look, the reality is you are never going to be able to sell everyone. You can’t even make everyone that’s in your life happy all the time, so how can you possibly sell to them all?

So put away your optimism and let’s talk about reality. The truth is, there’s one thing that is in your control and that is your choice of customers. Deliberately choosing the right customers in the first place, is half the battle for most people.

The more you just “take anyone who comes along” into your prospecting funnel, the more you waste your time.

Which is one of the problems with the internet, by the way. It offers you the least amount of prospecting control of almost any media. Not that I don’t like it, or profit from it as a media, but that’s just the way it is.

So how do you choose the right customer? What makes someone pre-qualified and what makes them unqualified to buy from you?

The answer is simple. There are three things, actually:

1. They have to have money. Broke people or people too broke to buy from you won’t pay your bills or feed your children. So stay away from them.

Repel them like skunk odor, and do everything in your power to avoid contact with them — at least, if you’re trying to run a profitable business, anyway.

2. You have to be able to reach them through your marketing. So for example, if you’ve developed something for undercover FBI agents or NFL football players, I don’t care how valuable your widget is, it’s gonna be tough to sell, simply because these two marketplaces aren’t very accessible.

3. And lastly, the people you’re selling to have to be comfortable buying through whatever media you’re using. For instance, there are some people who just won’t buy anything online, so unless you give them an alternative way of ordering, it’s going to be difficult to make them your customers.

Make sense?

This is an important subject that gets very little attention. Most people just think in terms of volume. You know, “Throw enough shit up against the wall and something’s bound to stick,” sort of mentality.

And that’s all well and good if you’ve got infinite dollars to spend on marketing and you don’t care how much time you waste, but since most successful people value their time more than anything else in the world, this really isn’t a good option.

(You can always make more money, but you can’t make more time, right?)

See where I’m going with all this?

There are a few more characteristics you should look for to find the best quality prospects, and over the next few days we’ll talk about some of them.

Hopefully… you’ll listen.

Now go sell something , Craig Garber

P.S. In this month’s Seductive Selling Newsletter, I answer these three critical lead-generation questions, sent in by members:

* How long (or short) can these “free reports” or sales letters be?

* What proportion of content should be included? And…

* How can you give away good content without giving away all the good stuff in what you’re selling?

Find out the answers to these questions, and a hell of a lot more, and take your free test-drive at http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

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