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

So, I built FanaticalProspecting.com.

The enduring mantra of the fanatical prospector is: One more call.

This is the brutal truth: In sales you are owed nothing! You've got to get your ass up and go out there and make things happen yourself. You have to pick up the phone, knock on doors, make presentations, and ask for business. Sales is not a nine-to-five job. There are no days off. No vacations. No lunch breaks. The great salespeople are skipping meals and doing deals—whatever it takes to win.

Seven Mindsets of Fanatical Prospectors

Optimistic and enthusiastic:

Competitive:

Confident:

Relentless:

Thirsty for knowledge:

Systematic and efficient:

Adaptive and flexible:

Stop Seeking the Easy Way Out and Start Interrupting and Engaging

It is not the “cold” call that is hard; it is the interrupting. Reps are just afraid to make the call, not the cold call.

Instead, the question is how to strategically balance prospecting across the various prospecting channels to give you a competitive advantage when interrupting prospects in the crowded, competitive marketplace.

4 Adopt a Balanced Prospecting Methodology

Balance simply means that to get the best return from your prospecting time investment, there should be a mixture of telephone, in-person, e-mail, social selling, text messaging, referrals, networking, inbound leads, trade shows, and cold calling.

If you work for a small company or a start-up, you'll need to balance your prospecting to both build your database with long-term opportunities and fill the pipe with deals you can close now.

5 The More You Prospect, the Luckier You Get

The Universal Law of Need The 30-Day Rule The Law of Replacement

The Universal Law of Need

The Universal Law of Need governs desperation. It states that the more you need something, the less likely it is that you will get it. This law comes into play in sales when lack of activity has left your pipeline depleted.

The 30-Day Rule

The 30-Day Rule is almost always in play in B2B and high-end B2C sales. In shorter-cycle transactional sales, the 30-Day Rule may become the “One-Week Rule,” but the concept remains the same.

The 30-Day Rule states that the prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days.

The implication of the 30-Day Rule is simple. Miss a day of prospecting and it will tend to bite you sometime in the next 90 days. Miss a week and you will feel it in your commission check. Miss the entire month and you will tank your pipeline, fall into a slump, and wake up 90 days later desperate, feeling like a loser, with no clue how you ended up there.

The Law of Replacement

Here's a math question: Becky has 30 prospects in her pipeline. Her closing percentage is 10 percent. She closes one deal. How many prospects remain in her pipe? Most people answer 29. The real answer is 20. So why 20? Here's the math. Becky has a 1 in 10 probability of closing a deal. That means on average she will close only one deal out of 10 prospects she puts in her pipeline. The net result is when she closes one deal, the other nine are no longer viable prospects. This means her pipeline will be reduced by 10 prospects rather than one. She must now replace those 10 prospects to keep her pipeline full.

The Anatomy of a Sales Slump

Sooner or later, we all let down our guard and find ourselves in desperate need of a sale. The cumulative impact of our poor decisions, procrastination, fears, lack of focus, and even laziness have added up and suddenly we are desperately scrambling to survive.

The First Rule of Sales Slumps

The first rule of holes is when you are in one, stop digging, and the first rule of sales slumps is when you are in one, start prospecting. The only real way to get out of a sales slump is to get back up to the plate and start swinging.

Know Your Numbers Managing Your Ratios

Sales is and always has been governed by numbers because, in sales, the formula for success is a simple mathematical formula: What (quality) you put into the pipe and how much (quantity) determines what you get out of the pipe.

Once you are tracking your numbers consistently, the door is opened to an honest assessment of both the efficiency and the effectiveness of your sales activities. 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)

This is why you must gather the courage and self-discipline to track, analyze, and make regular adjustments based on your prospecting performance stats. Keeping count keeps you grounded in reality and focused on your daily goal. It ensures that you remain honest with yourself about where you really stand against your targets and what you need to do or sacrifice to get back on track if you are missing your number.

One of the commonalities that I observe among top salespeople and fanatical prospectors across all market segments—inside and outside—is manual tracking of activity. They each have their own style and means of tracking their numbers, but the one thing they all know is exactly where they stand.

The Three Ps That Are Holding You Back

There are three mindsets that hold salespeople back from prospecting: procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis from analysis.

Procrastination

“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.”

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is highly correlated with fear of failure (which is generally not the best motivator) and self-defeating behavior, such as excessive procrastination.”1

Do research before and after the Golden Hours so that it does not encroach on your prospecting block.

Paralysis from Analysis

Here is what analysis paralysis sounds like emanating from the mouth of a salesperson: “Well, what if they say no?” “What if they say this or that?” “How will I know if…?” “What should I do if…?” Rather than just dialing the phone, sending the e-mail, or walking in the door and dealing with what comes next, the rep goes on a “what if” binge, often followed by an attempt to get every duck in a perfect row.

Disrupting the 3Ps

When I'm working with salespeople who are being held back by all or one of the 3Ps, I get them focused on making just one call. Then the next. Then the next. One call at a time. Sometimes I get a list and sit next to them and dial too. When they see that I'm not getting blown out of the water by prospects, it gets easier for them to let go and take action.

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Note 1. Carolyn Gregoire, “Fourteen Signs Your Perfectionism Has Gotten Out of Control,” Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/why-perfectionism-is-ruin_n_4212069.html.

8 Time The Great Equalizer of Sales