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

Before they could launch into more excuses, I gave them 10 minutes to go to their offices and pull together a list of 50 prospects and meet me back in the training room when they were done. Ten minutes later, with lists in hand, I gave them 30 minutes to call 25 prospects with a goal of setting two discovery appointments. The stunned look on their faces told the whole story. They fidgeted in their seats and stared at their phones. Two people said they felt better calling in their office. I wasn't budging. No more excuses. So with a little more prodding, they got down to work. Thirty minutes later, on average, each rep had made 22 dials and set at least one appointment. More dials and appointments than they'd been making in an entire eight-hour day. After some additional training and coaching, they were averaging 29 dials in 30 minutes and setting two appointments. I had their attention. The salespeople were shaking their heads, saying that they had no idea it was possible to get that much done in such a short period of time. The VP of sales and his CEO were blown away. They couldn't believe what we accomplished in such a short period of time. All I had done though was leverage the Horstman's Corollary to Parkinson's Law.