Too many salespeople look at prospecting as a solution.
In other words, a solution they only do when they don’t have enough in their pipeline, when all other attempts to sell have failed, or when it doesn’t look like they’re going to make their number. It’s a solution when they’re absolutely desperate. That is the wrong attitude about prospecting.
Prospecting is an activity you have to do with repetition.
Repetition brings exposure. Unless the prospect sees you enough, let me repeat, unless the prospect sees you enough they’re not going to engage with you.
Oftentimes salespeople throw out a whole bunch of cold call, text & emails—hundreds and thousands of them, get one or two bites, and then run with it and forget about all the others. They never come back to them. Let’s say you’ve qualified your leads, you know they’re good leads, but they’re not engaging with you. You haven’t been repetitive enough in reaching out to them, whether that be in person (to start) phone call, email, text messaging, social media, or a combination thereof. They must know who you are and what you do.
It takes time to see a difference.
Are you a person that exercises? Let’s say you go to the gym every day for a week or two, and you really don’t see any difference. You might start to feel a difference, but you really don’t see one. It isn’t until you are routinely doing it day in and day out for a long period of time that you begin to see the results.
Similarly in prospecting, you want to be doing this as an activity, and that actually means fewer prospects than you realize— but it’s repetitive. It’s over and over and over again, but never with the same message. Every message must be different. Follow Up is the life blood.
More prospects won’t solve your problem.
When I work with salespeople who are struggling with getting prospects, I always say, “Let’s take a look at the CRM system. Or, let’s look at your cadence. Let’s look at what you’ve been doing.” And you know what? 95% of the time, it’s not there.
They have not been reaching out. In the majority of these situations, they’ve had no repetition.
You see, this is why I say prospecting is an activity. This is also why I don’t think that you can prospect 500 people. At one time, I was working with some reps dealing with very large accounts, and each of them had 20-30 accounts, and they were thinking, “I need another 50, 75, 100 accounts.” No, you don’t. You have more than enough right there. Your solution to prospecting cannot be to just get a boatload more prospects. That’s a big fat mistake. Work and nurture your leads.
Today, this weekend make some time to update your CRM and prepare a plan to nurture and close those leads.
Happy Selling,
David
Payment Lynx Daily 