I received an email the other day from an old friend/client who I hadn’t spoken to in over 10 years. He lost his job recently, as have so many others, but he remains upbeat and has formulated a plan for finding a new position, which he has already put into action. Part of his plan includes many of the techniques he learned while sitting in on my prospecting seminars years back.

The reason I mention this is because prospecting skills can be used for so much more than just setting up sales appointments and finding new clients and prospects.

My friend is using it to set up interviews in search of a new job (and he’s getting those interviews). Recent college grads would be wise to learn prospecting skills to enhance their job search in what has become a very tight job market for young people. The days of mailing or emailing resumes and sitting back to wait for the calls to come in are over!!!

To learn the most crucial elements of successful prospecting, join me on August 5th at 1pm for another amazing 2 hour simulcast of Effective Prospecting Skills That Work! You can attend by phone or computer and participate in live Q&A. Do not miss this. Click here to sign up.

Those of you who think prospecting is only for salespeople could stand to learn from Elaine Sadowski.

Elaine Sadowski is the mother of San Francisco Giants pitcher Ryan Sadowski, who won his first two games after being called up from the minor leagues 10 days ago. This is significant because Ryan Sadowski was the longest of long shots to ever make it to the major leagues and he owes a lot of his success to the persistence and prospecting skills of his mother, Elaine.

According to Scott Ostler, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, Sadowski, who is 26, was a nice high school pitcher in the Miami area. He was recruited to The University of Florida, where he got his butt Super Glued to the bench. In two seasons, he pitched a total of 6 2/3 innings.

You can guess how much interest he stirred among pro scouts (For those of you who nothing about baseball, the answer is: zero). Sadowski believed he could pitch, but he knew it would be almost impossible to get a sniff. So he asked his mom, a retired elementary school teacher, to phone each of the 30 major league teams, get the name and phone number of the team's Miami-area scout, call each team's scout and say, "I'm Ryan Sadowski's mother. Please phone my son. He can pitch and he'd like a chance to show you."

Not the best message to leave, but if you’ve ever attended one of my prospecting sessions, listened to my audio program or viewed my DVD on prospecting, you know the most important thing is: Make the calls!! And that’s what Elaine Sadowski did.

To the scouts who were nice enough to phone him, Ryan said, "Listen, I'll come to you, I have a catcher. Just give me 10 minutes of your time."

All but two of the scouts told Sadowski they had exactly zero interest in a pitcher who barely pitched in college. But two scouts, including one for the Giants, told Sadowski they remembered him from high school and they'd take a look.

Now two out of thirty might not seem like much, but in Ryan Sadowski’s case he only needed one, or, what he really needed was 29 No’s. He did even better than that; he got two. And once you get your foot in the door, who knows what can happen. Here’s what happened to Sadowski.

Sadowski met the scouts at his old high school field, slapped catcher's gear on his college roommate and threw. He looked pretty good. Word spread. He held another one-man tryout camp and four scouts showed. Then 10. Then 30.

One of the scouts, whom Sadowski describes as "a mysterious man with a mustache" turned out to be Dick Tidrow, the Giants' vice president of player personnel. The Giants drafted Sadowski in the 12th round in 2003. Now here he is, six years later, pitching in the major leagues.

Granted, Ryan Sadowski is talented. But if his mother never makes the calls no one would have ever known of his talent.

As you can see from this story, prospecting is not just for salespeople. It’s a skill that can benefit almost everyone, because you never know when it will come in handy.