Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling (Jeb Blount)

by Jeb Blount

Law of the Universe: Nothing happens until something moves. Law of Business: Nothing happens until someone sells something. —Jeb Blount

New sales are the lifeblood of a business. Nothing is more important than securing discovery meetings, conversations, appointments, and sales calls with potential customers.

In sales, business, and life, there are only three things you can control: Your Actions Your Reactions Your Mindset That's it. Nothing more.

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

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

Prospecting is not for building relationships, selling, or chatting up your buyer. It is for setting the appointment, qualifying, building familiarity, and when it makes sense, moving into the sales process right on the spot.

Savvy sales professionals are super disciplined in qualifying prospects. They understand that time is money and it is a waste of time to work with prospects that are not going to buy. They know that qualified buyers are scarce, and a moment spent with a prospect who will never buy takes them away from their most important task—finding prospects that will buy.

The most expensive thing you can do in sales is spend your time with the wrong prospect. —Jeb Blount

You don't go to networking events to sell. You are not there to set appointments, get leads, or close business. You are there to create connections with other people. You get those other things after the connections are established. There should be no quid pro quo attached to your conversations.

Desire is the singularity of achievement. Anything truly worth achieving must begin with desire. Otherwise you'll fail. It's the key to tapping into the motivation you need to get past real and self-inflicted performance roadblocks. It's just easier to develop mental toughness and self-discipline when you have a goal.

Desire, though, is just the beginning. It's a spark. To ignite, you need a clear definition of what you want and where you are going. This requires you to answer three questions: What do you want? How do you plan to get what you want? How bad do you want it?

Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile. —Gary Ryan Blair