Selling to Oil and Gas – Lead vs Prospect

Part two of a three part series on how to sell to the Oil and Gas industry. This episode we talk about the differences between a lead vs a prospect. For the free qualifying cheat sheet click here: Qualifying a Sales Lead And we have a new book coming out on how to sell to the oil and gas market. Click here to learn more about the book and sign up to be notified of its release. Plus be invited to some “invitation only” live events where we help you with your selling efforts. Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry. [Music] All right. New sales year in oil and gas 2015 and this is the second part of a three-part series on some of the fundamentals on how to sell in oil and gas. Today’s show, we’re going to talk about something a lot of sales people get confused. The difference between a prospect and a lead. So, somebody that downloads one of your company’s white paper is not a prospect. Somebody that stops by your trade show booth is not a prospect. All right? Those guys are curious, but they may or may not have the ability to buy and they may or may not have a problem that you solve. In fact, they could easily be your competitors. And, if you’re still buying lists, those are definitely not prospects. And if you’re getting all your leads from marketing, you need to do something because that’s – it’s a sure route for trouble. So, here’s the deal. A lead is somebody that shows interest, but a prospect is somebody that is willing to buy. So, a prospect needs to be qualified to convert from a lead to a prospect. And the way you so that is you need to understand if they have a problem that you can solve, right? If you’re talking to somebody who has the authority to purchase or is on that decision making team. If they have budget and if there’s some time element like so what happens if they don’t solve this problem quickly. If those qualifying questions are answered, then you now converted a lead to a prospect. Now, we help our clients do this a lot because in oil and gas there’s so many leads that could be generated. What happen is you’ll spend all your time chasing leads that aren’t really prospects and you won’t actually close any business. So, we’re giving away a free cheat sheet that we’ll attach to this blog post that you could download to give you those qualifying questions to help you understand if you’re talking to a lead or to a prospect. Now, I have a couple of favors to ask of you. Number one, if you’re watching this on YouTube or on modalpoint blog, will you spread the love and click some of these social share buttons, please? And then number two, if you haven’t already done so, sign up for our monthly newsletter. It’s a great free resource, all the oil and gas events that are going on. And then, we also have a new book coming up, how to sell in the oil and gas world and you can sign up for the pre-release and so you can be notified when it gets released. So, folks I hope this helped, we will see you next time.  

Related reading & references

• Running an AI audit in oil & gas
• The new rules for selling
• ModalPoint (today)
• External reference: U.S. Census Bureau business economy data

The reason the lead/prospect line matters so much in energy is that a “prospect” only becomes real once it enters the operator’s funded decision path. Understanding the oil & gas buying process tells you exactly when a contact crosses that line — and when you’re still talking to a tire-kicker.