Simple ways to get more prospecting results with less stress
By Michael Caron, President, Northbound Learning
Prospecting is universally the least liked aspect of a sales professional’s existence. Frustratingly, it also represents the greatest potential for income growth for most of us (including me). Here are 3 key areas for prospecting, or better put, business development success:
Have a script — When you’ve only got a few moments to give someone a reason to have a conversation with you, you’d better be able to convey what your message is in a clear, concise and complete manner. Just “winging it” almost always results in a rambling, powerless message that misses the “Compelling Business Reason”.
Practice — How can you tell that you’ve nailed your phone skill? Will your prospects tell you? Not likely. You’ll see it in your numbers but you can’t count on customers to give you honest feedback like, “Well, Michael, I’m not willing to continue this conversation because you haven’t really explained clearly how your service can help me with my problems.”
For honest feedback, you need to practice with a colleague or your manager. It might be slightly painful to the ego to hear their comments but if it will make you more money, I’m sure your bruised ego will recover nicely. Making your mistakes in the field can cost you thousands of dollars.
Track Everything! — Keep track of how many contact attempts you make (phone & e-mail), the number of decision makers your connect with, the number that advance and the number of new meetings you book. You are probably already tracking how many proposals you get out and the number of sales closed and if you are, keep doing it.
You don’t have to have your company’s CRM reprogrammed to do this. A simple, low-tech and proven way to track your prospecting activity is to use a sheet where you place a tick every time you do an activity. Crude? Yes. Effective? Very! Click below for a sample that we call a “Green Sheet” — green because if you’re prospecting, it means you’re growing. At the end of each week, add up your numbers and plug them into a spreadsheet. After a few weeks of this, look at your totals & averages and play CSI investigator.
By looking at the evidence before you, you will be able to draw conclusions that will help you manage your prospecting process better. You will see what’s working and what’s not. You will see if you need to focus on improving your skills, your activity levels or both. Some of the comments I often hear from sales reps who adopt this strategy are, “As soon as I started keeping track of my numbers, they all went up!” and “I now know exactly what I have to do to hit my target this year!”
To download a free copy of Northbound’s “Green Sheet” click here.
If you can put these strategies in play, not only will you get dramatically better results, but you might even dislike prospecting a little less!
You and your team can learn to prospect better and in less time with Northbound’s “Power Prospecting” and “Connecting to Mr. Big Cheese” workshops. For more information or to arrange a complimentary workshop for your team, contact us by email at [email protected].
Do you really know the cost?
By Michael Caron, President, Northbound Sales Training
Interruptions are one of the biggest time suckers for most. Did you know that if you are focussing in the middle of a task that it takes 6 minutes to get back to the same level of focus as before the interruption? If you get interrupted just 5 times in an hour, you’re only working at 50% productivity!
Take the advice of a good friend of mine, a Long Islander named Don. “Think about your BEST friend. Picture that person in your mind’s eye. Now, with that person in mind, think about WHY you regard them as your best friend.” Specifically, what is it about them that lead you to feel the way about them that you do? Go ahead and take a minute or two.
Jack Cullen is a co-founder of CRKInteractive, a US-based provider of cutting-edge performance development programs for over 20 years. Northbound Learning has an exclusive Canadian partnership with CRK.
Would you like a simple, inexpensive way to increase the number of meetings booked from your prospecting call efforts by 50% or more? I know—that’s like asking if you’d like to pay less in taxes. Of course!
It’s best to send a letter by snail mail. I can hear the groans already. “Snail mail? We live in an instant message world. Why would I ever resort to communication technology that’s in the Dark Ages?” Because electronic communication is so prevalent today, receiving something by regular mail is in fact more impactful. Additionally, email addresses are often difficult to get while mailing addresses are easily available. It also gives you the opportunity to enclose something of value such as a ad specialty or as simple as a coffee card. You will be amazed at how many prospects will remember you and your letter at the time of the call because of an inexpensive token. If you do your math to determine your R.O.I., you’ll see that spending a little time and money on strategic marketing to your prospects pays huge dividends.
Unless you work on a deserted island, dealing with people is a fact of life. The better you are at it, the easier it will be to get along—on and off the job.
Dealing with Mike the Manipulator Mike the Manipulator’s goal is for others to do his job. What do you say in response to his tricky maneuvers? Some possible replies:
Len D’Innocenzo is a co-founder of CRKInteractive, a US-based provider of cutting-edge performance development programs for over 20 years. Northbound Learning has an exclusive Canadian partnership with CRK.
I’m not going to tell you in this article that you should be setting goals. If you’re a reader of sales-enhancing literature, you’ve surely read lots on the power of goal setting. If you consistently set written, realistic goals with all the other necessary components for goal success, then read no further. If, however, you are one of the 95% of the population who doesn’t, continue reading.
With a little bit of effort and discipline to avoid the classic goal setting obstacles noted above, you too can turn your dreams into reality.
Congratulations for reading this and not putting it off! Procrastination has been appropriately called the “silent killer of careers,” yet few people have ever had formal training on how to overcome this immensely costly habit. While managing this problem is a constant challenge to me, I have learned some strategies over the years that have worked very well.
Think of the end result. Instead of thinking of how difficult the process may be to accomplish something, think rather of the end result and all the great things that it will mean to you. Turn thoughts of “I hate cold calling, it’s not much fun” into “if I make two hours of calls, I’ll probably book one meeting, I usually close one out of two meetings, so I’m 50% towards a sale if I make some calls!” Once your brain clearly connects the doing of a task with the major benefits of doing so, you will be unstoppable!
1. Leads cost money, and your team is probably dropping more than you think! According to a major study of top US firms conducted by CSO Insights, over 50% of leads are not properly followed up, and only 20% of all leads are actually followed up in the recommended fashion!
A good CRM system can completely change the dynamic of a sales pipeline review from one where the sales manager asks the same questions over and over again:
Leave micro-management to the system. All these questions are captured in the opportunity record so that weekly meetings can be much more strategic; that is, “how can we win this deal?”
If you even think you might need CRM, you’re already leaving thousands of dollars of revenue on the table! At a minimum, every customer we work with who says “yeah, we might benefit from CRM” will see a lift of 10% in top-line sales by doing so.
It’s hard to catch the news on the radio, TV or the web without being exposed to the disturbing economy. Another company laying off; investments plummeting; housing slumping. In the sales world, we have our own unique set of problems brought on by the worst recession in over 3 decades—dropping margins, sinking closing rates, customers not calling us back. What can we do? As sales leaders we clearly have two primary paths to choose from: 1) Wait for the economy to recover (and it will!) or 2) Increase our sales efficiency to help compensate for the downturn. Naturally, option 2 is preferable so the next question becomes “How?”
Prospect every day. Block some time in your calendar daily and devote it exclusively to making introductory calls to uncover new leads. Generally, you ought to be able to make 10-15 calls per hour on the phone and 5-7 per hour in person. If your personal goals require that you make 25 calls daily to hit your revenue objectives, it means you need to set aside two hours every day. A recent study by M.I.T. shows that the best time to make calls to prospects is at the beginning and at the end of the day but I recommend starting by blocking this time for first thing in the morning. That’s when you’re at your sharpest, and are least likely to have other issues or tasks competing for your time.