We have to pay our dues to be successful in business. Fortunately we all have to pay the same coin everyday to make it happen... at least in the early days of the business.

The coin we have to pay is called "prospecting".

Prospecting is the activity of looking for people to talk to who could be potentially interested in your product or service. These are people who could become paying customers in the future.

Without prospecting, there is no business! This is because without a paying customer, THERE IS NO BUSINESS! This is the same for NGOs and charities, but that’s a topic for another day.

So! For the average business person, you either have to look for the customers yourself, or pay someone else who can.

Nowadays there are folks talking about "product led growth" where the product "sells itself" and because of that neither YOU nor someone else has to do any selling.... that's a topic for another day... and there's some nuance there people leave out in their optimism.

Prospecting is the coin we have to pay, and like any other coin, it has two faces.

All coins have either "heads" or "tails", and so does prospecting.

Prospecting is either done "face to face" (some people call this “canvassing”) or through "demand generation".

Which is "heads" in this case? Whichever one you find easier to use!

And what's the difference between the two? We'll tackle that in future posts.

The bottom line is, get ready to pay your dues!