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

Prospects meet with you for their reasons, not yours. You must articulate the value of spending time with you in the context of what is most important to them. 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.

Be careful not to overcomplicate things. Your prospecting message is designed for one purpose: to quickly persuade your prospect to give you their time. What

If you want prospects to be enthusiastic about meeting you, be enthusiastic about meeting them.

Prospects are going to agree to give up their valuable time for their reasons, not yours. The lower the risk to them for giving up their time, the more likely they'll be willing to give it up.

“I'm helping several restaurants in town with significant savings on supplies. I thought we could meet so I can spend time learning about you and your restaurant to see if what we offer might be a fit.”

“I'd like 15 minutes of your time because I want to learn more about you and your company” works surprisingly well with many prospects.

The most effective way to craft the right message is to simply stand in your prospect's shoes. Look at things through their eyes and use your God-given empathy to sense their emotions and to consider what might be important to them.

The fact is, if you are having a hard time getting appointments, getting to decision makers, getting information, or closing the deal, 9 out of 10 times it is because you are not asking. Why? Because 9 out of 10 times you are afraid to hear “no.”

When salespeople demonstrate confidence and ask assertively for what they want, prospects say yes about 70 percent of the time.

With e-mail, social messaging, and text messages, direct, assumptive words and sentence structure are the body language of the written word. When you choose weak, passive words, it sends the message that you lack confidence.

Salespeople who ignore the phone fail. They deliver mediocre results and cheat themselves out of hard cash.

In sales, time is money, and you can cover far more ground, qualify more opportunities, and set more appointments in a one-hour targeted phone block than in an entire day of driving around in your territory randomly knocking on doors.

The phone is the most efficient prospecting tool because when you are organized, you can reach more prospects in a shorter period of time than through any other prospecting channel—even e-mail.

The telephone is also more effective than e-mail, social, and text because when you are actually speaking to another human being, there is a higher probability that you'll set appointments, sell stuff, and gather qualifying information.

Shorter, more impactful calls mean you complete phone blocks faster, which in turn keeps your pipeline full and gives you more time to spend engaged in the activities that make sales fun. An effective telephone prospecting call might sound like this—a simple five-step framework: Get their attention by using their name: “Hi, Julie.” Identify yourself: “My name is Jeb Blount and I'm with Sales Gravy.” Tell them why you are calling: “The reason I'm calling is to set up an appointment with you.” Bridge—give them a because: “I just read an article online that said your company is going to add 200 new sales positions over the next year. Several companies in your industry are already using Sales Gravy exclusively for sourcing sales candidates and they are very happy with the results we are delivering.” Ask for what you want, and shut up: “I thought the best place to start is to schedule a short meeting to learn about your sales recruiting challenges and goals. How about we meet Wednesday afternoon around 3:00 PM?”

The single biggest mistake salespeople make on prospecting calls is they keep talking instead of giving their prospect the opportunity to respond to their request. This increases resistance, creates objections, and gives your prospect an easy way out.

Ask for what you want, and shut up.

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If you think about prospecting in the same vein, salespeople who prospect daily on a regular schedule are always more successful over time than those who make the attempt to time their prospecting. Like investing, statistics are always in the favor of the salesperson who does a little bit of prospecting every day.

Telephone prospecting is the most important activity in sales. It is the one activity that will have the greatest positive impact on the health of your pipeline, career, and income. It also sucks. It's frustrating, uncomfortable, and covered with slimy green frog warts. Tracy writes that staring at the frog will not make it more appetizing. When “you have to eat a frog, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long.” The same with prospecting. Thinking about it, pushing it off, or trying to time it will not make it any more appetizing. The longer that frog sits there, the more foul it gets. That's when the bargaining starts happening. Instead of just eating it and getting it over with, you start making deals with yourself to “double up” on your frog eating tomorrow. It never works, though. Once you start procrastinating, you'll never catch up. As you push prospecting off, more tasks, problems, and burning fires move in to take its place. This is why you should block your first two hours every day for telephone activity. Set the appointment with yourself and keep it. Your energy level, confidence, and enthusiasm will be at their peak at the beginning of the day. Plus, prospects will have fewer things on their plate as they begin their day, which makes for less resistance and more yesses.

“Anytime you are getting great rates and great service, you should never think about changing. All I want to do is come by and get to know you a little better. And even if it doesn't make sense to do business with me at the moment, I can at least give you a competitive quote that will help you keep those other guys honest.” (Disrupt)

Courage is developed in the presence of fear, not in spite of it.

Hold the cheese. Never use cheesy schemes or tricks. Tricks don't work. They harm your credibility and you'll end up on the gatekeeper's do-not-talk-to list, which means it will have to snow at the equator before you get through. Be honest about who you are and why you are calling and ask for what you want. You may not get through the first time, but your honesty will be appreciated and remembered, which will play a huge role in opening the gate in the future.

what sets Kelly apart from his peers is relentless prospecting.

Each day Kelly invests an hour prospecting by phone; his goal is to set two to three appointments with qualified prospects.

truly effective salespeople understand that it is all about asking the prospect the right questions and demonstrating that you can help them solve a particular problem or issue. That means you need to direct all of your attention on their situation and resist the opportunity to talk about your company or your offering.”

However, when you get them talking about themselves, show interest, give them your complete attention, and listen, they will engage, give you information, and look for ways to help you.

Before every IPP call, make the conscious decision to focus your attention on your prospect. Tell yourself to listen instead of pitch. Make a commitment to slow down and ask questions, really listen to the answers, and ask relevant follow-up questions.

Once you have a message that you know works for a particular market vertical or group of similar prospects, you can send it out with minimal effort.

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Use action words and directive statements instead of questions. List-based subject lines that include a testimonial like “3 Reasons Why ABC Chose Us” are especially powerful, as are referral subject lines like “Jeb Blount Said We Should Talk” and statement-based subject lines like “Biggest Fail in Industrial Pumps.”

Define your desired outcome. If you don't know what you want, you won't get what you want. If you fail to clearly define what you are asking your prospect to do or provide, they will be confused and your e-mail won't convert.

If you are unable to answer WIIFM with value that exceeds the cost of your prospect giving up their time, your e-mail will not convert.

While I don't know if we are a good fit for your bank, why don't we schedule a short call to help me learn more about your unique challenges? From there we can decide if it makes sense to set up a deeper conversation. How about next Thursday at 3:00 PM?

Dave caps things off with the phrase “your unique challenges.” This makes Lawrence feel important because everyone believes that their situation is unique. Finally, Dave takes away the pressure by implying that the call will be short and lowers risk by saying if it doesn't make sense, “I'm not going to push things.”

The truth is, writing effective prospecting e-mail messages is not easy. The most difficult step is training yourself to stop thinking about your product or service and alternatively step into your prospect's shoes, relate to their situation, and learn to speak their language. Develop the habit of researching prospects and becoming aware of trigger events that are impacting them and opening up buying windows.

I want you to stop for a moment and look at yourself in the mirror. See yourself for who you really are, an elite athlete. Just as a professional sports team counts on its players to deliver in the game, your company counts on its elite athletes (you) to deliver in the marketplace. When the whistle blows each morning, you've got to be ready to rock it.

Change your mindset. Change your game.

Last year we hired a sales rep to sell advertising for Sales Gravy. We gave her training, guidance, support, and leads. When she started, I had a heart-to-heart conversation with her. I explained that the first 60 days would the hardest she would face. She would have to work hard to build her pipeline. Along the way she'd get lots of rejection, make mistakes, and become embarrassed from time to time as she learned to present a new, unfamiliar product. Our new rep worked hard for exactly 29 days. Then I got the call. She was quitting. There were lots of excuses: The job was overwhelming, she didn't feel like she was having success, maybe advertising sales wasn't the best fit. I explained again that these feelings were to be expected with something new, and if she just stuck with it for a little while longer, her efforts would pay off. But her mind was already made up. She quit. We jumped on the phone and followed up with all of the prospects she'd put into her pipeline. She did a great job in her first 29 days of getting qualified prospects into the pipe. So good, in fact, that we closed almost all of the opportunities she had developed. Her commission on these sales would have been $7,000. Instead she received zero. Quitting is a choice. Most people when faced with challenges quit too soon—often right as they are on the cusp of success.

Persistence is the fuel of winners. It is the tenacity and determination to keep going in spite of self-doubt, roadblocks, failure, embarrassment, and setbacks. Persistence picks you up off the ground, dusts you off, and sends you back into the game. Persistence gives you that last, final push across the finish line.

Everybody wants the glory of the close, but most people are unwilling to grind—to pay the price for success. In any endeavor, success is paid for in advance with hard work. In sales, success is paid for in advance with prospecting. You will never excel at anything if you don't put the hard work in first.

Writing down your goals and plan makes you unstoppable. When you write down your goals, ink on paper, you tap into a powerful motivational force. A written plan forces action. Something inside of you begins to drive you forward, pushing you toward your destination. It is there, written in stone, and it cannot be ignored until it has been accomplished.