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by
Jeb Blount
Superstars are relentless, unstoppable prospectors. They are obsessive about keeping their pipeline full of qualified prospects. They prospect anywhere and anytime—constantly turning over rocks looking for their next opportunity. They prospect day and night—unstoppable and always on. Fanatical!
The brutal fact is the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe, and, the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect.
The next step is keeping it real. In sales, business, and life, there are only three things you can control: Your Actions Your Reactions Your Mindset
Jim Rohn once said that you shouldn't wish that things were easier; you should wish that you were better. That's the promise I make to you. When you adopt the techniques in this book, you will get better.
We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don't like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. —Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Optimistic and enthusiastic: Fanatical prospectors have a winning, optimistic mindset.
Competitive: Fanatical prospectors view prospecting through the eyes of a fierce competitor.
Confident: Fanatical prospectors approach prospecting with confidence. They expect to win and believe they are going to win.
Relentless: Fanatical prospectors have a high need for achievement.
Thirsty for knowledge: Fanatical prospectors welcome feedback and coaching.
Systematic and efficient: Fanatical prospectors have the ability to execute with near-robotic and systematical efficiency.
Adaptive and flexible: Fanatical prospectors have acute situational awareness.
Interrupting your prospect's day is a fundamental building block of robust sales pipelines. No matter your prospecting approach, if you don't interrupt relentlessly, your pipeline will be anemic.
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy. —Dale Carnegie
The Universal Law of Need The 30-Day Rule The Law of Replacement
It is when pipelines are empty that salespeople find themselves face to face with the Universal Law of Need.
Desperation magnifies and accelerates failure and virtually guarantees that he won't close the deals he must have to survive.
The 30-Day Rule states that the prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days. It is a simple, yet powerful universal rule that governs sales and you ignore it at your peril. When you internalize
this rule, it will drive you to never put prospecting aside for another day.
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.
When you find yourself in a slump, take a breath, acknowledge that your negative emotions are just making things worse, and commit yourself to daily prospecting. Do whatever it takes to get your mind focused on prospecting and committing to daily goals.
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
There are three mindsets that hold salespeople back from prospecting: procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis from analysis.
Every major failure in my life has been a direct result of a collapse in my self-discipline to do the little things every day.
“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.”
Perfectionism is highly correlated with fear of failure (which is generally not the best motivator) and self-defeating behavior, such as excessive procrastination.”1
To succeed in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here's what's exciting—there are lots of people! —Jim Rohn
“In God we trust; everyone else, we follow up on.”
Invest in building relationships with your
support staff.
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.
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.
The two biggest prospecting derailers for sales professionals are e-mail and mobile devices (text, social media, e-mail, web surfing, apps). When something new hits your inbox or social stream—ding, buzz, lights, action! Like clockwork, your concentration shifts to e-mail or a smartphone.
Blocking out the first one to two hours of each day for a focused telephone prospecting block is the mark of fanatical prospectors.
(Annual Income Goal)/(Number of Working Weeks × Golden Hours) = What You Are Worth an Hour
The objective is the primary outcome you expect from your prospecting touch. There are four core prospective objectives: Set an appointment. Gather information and qualify. Close a sale. Build familiarity.
If you are selling a complex, high-risk, high-cost product or service, your primary objective will most often be an appointment with a qualified decision maker, influencer, or other stakeholder who can help you move the deal forward. Your secondary objective will be to gather information. Your tertiary objective will be to build familiarity.
Prospecting Is a Contact Sport Prospecting, in many ways, is a brutal contact sport that shuns the nuance, art, and finesse of moving a deal through the sales pipe. To be effective, you've got to know what you want and ask for it. To be efficient, you've got to get in as many prospecting touches as possible during each prospecting block.
To be absolutely clear, an appointment is a meeting that is on your calendar and your prospect's calendar; in other words, they are expecting you to show up in person or by phone, video call, or web conference at a specific time and date.
This means that you will want to: Set appointments with the prospects that are highly qualified and/or in the buying window Nurture the prospects that you've qualified but are not in the buying window Gather information on the prospects for which you have some or no data so you
can qualify their potential and learn their buying windows Eliminate the prospect records that are bogus, out of business, too small, too big, or will never be buyers
Once you have developed the profile of your ideal customer, you can develop the questions you'll need to qualify your prospects and identify the best opportunities. Next, make a commitment to measure every prospect, deal, and customer against this profile. When they don't fit, develop the discipline to walk away.
1 to 3 touches to reengage an inactive customer 1 to 5 touches to engage a prospect who is in the buying window and is familiar with you and your brand 3 to 10 touches to engage a prospect who has a high degree of familiarity with you or your brand, but is not in the buying window 5 to 12 touches to engage a warm inbound lead 5 to 20 touches to engage a prospect who has some familiarity with you and your brand—buying window dependent 20 to 50 touches to engage a cold prospect who does not know you or your brand
Each time you leave a voice mail, they hear your name and your company name and their familiarity with you increases. Each time you send an e-mail, they read your name and see your e-mail address, company name, and service brand, and their familiarity with you increases. When you connect with them on LinkedIn, familiarity increases. When you like, comment on, or share something they post on a social media channel, familiarity increases. When you meet them at an industry conference and put a face with a name, familiarity increases.
Top performers view their prospect database as a pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the thousands of prospects they know little about other than a company name and perhaps some contact information. They don't know if the information about the prospect is correct (and there is a good chance that it isn't). Action: The goal with these prospects is to move them up the pyramid by gathering information to correct and confirm data, fill in the missing pieces, and begin the qualifying process. Higher up the pyramid, the information improves. There is solid contact information, including e-mail
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This is a wake-up call. 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.
The most expensive thing you can do in sales is spend your time with the wrong prospect. —Jeb Blount
These salespeople see themselves “working for the man,” whereas fanatical prospectors believe that they are the CEO
This is supported by data that indicates that it can take between 20 and 50 touches to engage a prospect with little to no familiarity with you or your company, but just 1 to 10 touches to engage an inactive customer, warm inbound lead, or prospect who has a high degree of familiarity with you, your company, or your brand.
Familiarity lubricates prospecting because it makes the prospect's decision to give you their time feel less risky.
