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by
Jeb Blount
Fanatical prospectors carry around a pocket full of business cards. They talk up strangers in doctors' offices, at sporting events, in line to get coffee, in elevators, at conferences, on planes, trains, and anywhere else they can get face to face with potential customers. They get up in the morning and bang the phone. During the day they knock on doors. In between meetings they prospect with e-mail and text. At night they connect with and engage prospects on social media. Before they quit for the day they make even more calls.
Optimistic and enthusiastic: Fanatical prospectors have a winning,
Competitive:
mixture of telephone, in-person, e-mail, social selling, text messaging, referrals, networking, inbound leads, trade shows, and cold calling.
The Universal Law of Need The 30-Day Rule The Law of Replacement
Instead, you focus on what will happen to you if you don't get what you need, thereby attracting failure.
The 30-Day Rule states that the prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days.
The lesson the Law of Replacement teaches is that you must constantly be pushing new opportunities into your pipeline so that you're replacing the opportunities that will naturally fall out. And, you must do so at a rate that matches or exceeds your closing ratio. This is where a fanatical prospecting mindset really begins to pay off.
The only real way to get out of a sales slump is to get back up to the plate and start swinging.
There is a parallel singularity in sales: The more you prospect, the luckier you get.
Will training, experience, and technique make you a better prospector? Of course. However, it is far more important that you prospect consistently than that you prospect using the best techniques.
Efficiency is how much activity you are generating in the time block allotted for a particular prospecting activity. Effectiveness is the ratio between the activity and the outcome. Your drive is to optimize the balance between the two and maximize the outcome. Efficiency + Effectiveness = Performance (E + E = P)
he had no visibility into what was actually happening with his prospecting activity.
Track prospecting activity outside of Salesforce
There are three mindsets that hold salespeople back from prospecting: procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis from analysis.
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Horstman's Corollary Parkinson's Law states that work tends to expand to fill the time allotted for it. Horstman's Corollary is the converse. It describes how work contracts to fit into the time allowed. I simply changed the paradigm the reps were working
We schedule our prospecting blocks into three “Power Hours”
3 (1) hour time blok to prosext = about 120 calls a day
We minimize the downtime between calls by having our targeted call lists prepared and researched in advance (Platinum Hour work). We take notes during the block and wait until after the block concludes to log our calls and update the CRM—time that is blocked specifically for CRM activity. We also schedule blocks for e-mail and social prospecting.
If you invest just an hour a day to make 25 to 50 teleprospecting calls and another hour for e-mail and social prospecting, I can absolutely and unequivocally guarantee that in less than 60 days, your pipeline will be packed.
“No,” they'll explain, “I made way more than that.” Delusion brought on by multitasking.
We delude ourselves into believing that if we don't jump right on it we'll be judged as nonresponsive or worse.
Blocking out the first one to two hours of each day for a focused telephone prospecting block is the mark of fanatical prospectors.
way. He went on to explain that most people don't take the time to calculate their worth, and because they don't understand what they are worth, they spend their time on activities that are far below their pay grade, and this holds them back.
It was one of the most poignant lessons I ever learned and one I have never forgotten. Know your worth.
Understanding what you are worth helps you gain awareness of the cost of focusing on trivial things. Getting a bead on your worth is easy to do. Just take your annual income goal and divide it by the total number of Golden Hours in each year and you'll find what you are worth per hour. (Annual Income Goal)/(Number of Working Weeks × Golden Hours) = What You Are Worth an Hour Use this per-hour number as a gauge to determine whether a given task, activity, or assignment is moving you toward your goals or away from them.
If you have a highly qualified database of prospects in your CRM, the primary objective of most of your prospecting calls will be setting appointments as the buying window opens to start the sales process. The secondary objective will be building familiarity to increase the probability that your prospect will engage when the buying window opens.
Once you have identified the buying window, your primary objective will shift to setting an appointment.
If you are new in your territory or working for a start-up or new division, your primary objective will be gathering information so you can identify decision makers and qualify buying windows and budgets. The secondary objective will be to build familiarity.
ask one or two questions to qualify the opportunity, and gain agreement for an appointment on the spot that gives you the space to ask deeper questions, bridge to a solution, and close the sale.
20 to 50 touches to engage a cold prospect who does not know you or your brand
This is why savvy sales professionals create strategic prospecting campaigns (SPCs) that cross-leverage prospecting channels to systematically build familiarity.
To gain their attention you might develop an SPC that includes phone calls and voice mails, e-mail, social, targeted trade shows, and industry conferences. Your primary objective is to create enough familiarity that these cold prospects are more likely to engage.
The quality of list you work from during each prospecting block has a more significant impact on the success of the block than any other element except your mindset.
Starting your day by calling the prospects on the top of your pyramid will deliver early wins. These wins give you confidence and motivation to attack the remainder of the sales day.
These salespeople see themselves “working for the man,” whereas fanatical prospectors believe that they are the CEO of their territory. They are working for themselves.
“Patricia, thank you again for your business. I'm glad to hear you are happy with us. I'm working hard to add more customers like you. Would you be able to introduce me to other people in your network who might want to use our product?”
“People will forget what you said or did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”
Finally, I log any leads in my CRM no later than the next morning. If I promised to send something, schedule an appointment, or introduce them to someone else, I schedule a task and take action within 24 hours of the event.
Organizations like the chamber of commerce, Rotary Club, trade organizations, and other business and civic groups are always in need of guest speakers.
I also sent connection requests to the prospects I sold and the ones I'd had conversations with on the phone but was unable to close. While building my call lists, I scanned LinkedIn profiles for data points that might make my calls more relevant. In other words, I wove social media into a balanced prospecting effort
Call
email
linkedin messave
linkedin connect
Providing insight and education to prospects is also a brilliant way to nurture high-value prospects as part of a strategic prospecting campaign (SPC).
When you combine social with phone, in-person, e-mail, networking, and trade shows, you build a robust strategic prospecting machine that is almost impossible to beat.
You must block 30 minutes to an hour each day (preferably before or after the Golden Hours)
Outbound prospecting and inbound social prospecting go together like mashed potatoes and gravy. Social selling impacts familiarity, is an excellent for research and trigger-event awareness, and will generate inbound leads. It is, however, a long-term, passive strategy that requires patience and nuance and is unlikely to produce immediate results or to ever scale to a size that generates enough inbound leads to allow you to reach your sales and income goals.
Your message must demonstrate a sincere interest in listening to them, learning about them, and solving their unique problems. This is how you break down initial resistance so that you earn an appointment, gain the opportunity to gather qualifying information, or engage in a sales conversation right in the moment.
You'd want the interruption to be relevant to your situation, problems, or issues.
the risk for your prospect by answering WIIFM—the most important question on their mind: What's in it for me?
“a clear statement of the tangible results a customer gets from using your products or services. It's outcome focused and stresses the business value of your offering.”
Focuses on a business objective that is measured: You'll get their attention when you focus on a metric that impacts their performance. Disrupts status quo: The status quo is powerful. People abhor change and will only move from the status quo when they feel they can significantly improve their current situation—increase sales, reduce costs, improve efficiency, reduce stress, and so on. Offers proof or evidence: When you can provide information about how much
Power Statement must answer: The prospect's issues Your offerings that address these issues
