CHAPTER 3

Prospecting

The Real Reason for Empty Sales Pipelines

THERE ARE BASIC CAUSE-AND-EFFECT SITUATIONS in life. If you don’t water your plants, they wither and die. If you don’t exercise, there is a good chance you will gain weight. And if you don’t fill the tank with gas, expect your car to stall on the highway.

There are similar cause-and-effect situations in sales. If you don’t prospect consistently and effectively, you will experience empty sales pipelines, cyclical sales cycles, and inconsistent results.

Every salesperson knows that consistent prospecting is essential for achieving revenue goals. Business development activities vary by industry, life cycle of the company, and sophistication of the company’s marketing department. However, many salespeople are still responsible for generating some or all of their own opportunities.

So why do so many salespeople struggle with sporadic, ineffective prospecting efforts? Why do companies need a CRM tool to make sure members of their sales staff are doing what they signed up to do: prospect, acquire, and retain customers?

Salespeople and sales managers throw various training solutions at this prospecting problem. Goal-setting workshops are held to set specific sales activity metrics. Time management skills are taught for better organization. More sales training is delivered on value propositions, referrals, and social media. Strategy is discussed to determine who is a good prospect and how to approach them. All of the above are good efforts that too often result in short spurts of sales activity and motivation, soon replaced by salespeople sitting at their desks surfing the Internet in non–work-related activity.

Success in prospecting requires a combination of hard selling skills, emotional intelligence skills, and awareness of how to sell to the “old brain.” Soft skills such as delayed gratification, interpersonal skills, reality testing, and stress tolerance are often overlooked when diagnosing inconsistent or ineffective prospecting. Most value propositions, a basic sales skill used in prospecting, are not designed to sell to the old brain. The result is prospecting conversations that never convert to an appointment.

Let’s take a closer look at the soft skills, hard skills, and the neuroscience behind effective prospecting.

Are You a Sales Marshmallow Grabber?

In 1972, Dr. Walter Mischel, a Stanford University psychology researcher, conducted a study that’s often referred to as the “marshmallow” study. He gathered a group of four-year-old children together and placed a marshmallow in front of each one. Mischel told the children he would return in about twenty minutes and if they didn’t eat their marshmallow, they would receive another one.

Now, you’re four years old with a delicious marshmallow sitting in front of you. What would you do? Some children quickly grabbed the marshmallow, while others waited patiently for Mischel’s return.

Mischel continued his research, following the children for fourteen years. The results are pretty amazing. The kids who waited and did not grab the marshmallows scored 210 points higher on SATs, were more socially competent, and experienced more personal and professional success than their marshmallow-grabbing peers. These children demonstrated an emotional intelligence skill called “delayed gratification.” They were willing to wait before achieving the reward. The marshmallow grabbers demonstrated instant gratification: “I want it and I want it now.”

So what does marshmallow grabbing have to do with prospecting and sales success? Salespeople scoring low in delayed gratification get frustrated easily. If one hour of prospecting by phone, email, or social media doesn’t yield results, they give up. If they don’t meet a prospect at an association meeting, they quit attending meetings. When their instant-gratification need is not met, business development stops or slows down.

Research from the National Sales Executive Association shows that most salespeople quit pursuing an opportunity after four prospecting attempts. This same research shows that most business is closed after five to twelve outreaches. In many cases, you have skilled salespeople not hitting revenue goals simply because they give up too soon on their prospecting efforts.

Another problem created by the need for instant gratification is lack of planning and analysis and a consequent lack of development of a strategic pursuit strategy. Salespeople scoring high in delayed gratification will devote the necessary time to analyze their business in order to receive the reward of investing future prospecting time in the right places with the right prospects. Salespeople not putting in the time to plan are often busy—but not productive. These are the salespeople who are making cold calls, sending prospecting emails, going to networking events, involved in associations, and proactively using the social media tools. Their calendar is full; their sales pipeline is not.

Busy or Productive?

Salespeople, like other professions, get caught up in the daily rat race for success. Many are running a full-blown campaign to be president of the Busy Club. (How many of you have ever compared calendars with a colleague, bragging about how busy you are?) “Busy” doesn’t always mean “effective.”

The excitement of being busy often clouds the true results of your prospecting efforts. Salespeople scoring high in delayed gratification take time each month and quarter to determine what sales activities are producing the best results. Then they do the logical thing: invest more time in those activities.

It might be time to hold a truth-telling session with yourself and ask the following questions about your prospecting activities:

  Is social media working for you or are you just avoiding talking to real prospects?

  How many connections have you made on LinkedIn that resulted in contacts and client acquisition?

  Are you attending networking events that yield a good time but no clients?

  Are your referral partners referring or just meeting you for lunch?

  How many referrals are you asking for and receiving?

  Are your articles generating leads or writer’s cramp?

  Do you have lots of friends on Facebook and no clients?

  Do you know your conversion rate from activity to appointment to close?

Fish Where the Fish Are

Salespeople who thrive on instant gratification also waste time running appointments with prospects who are never going to buy. It’s a simple formula. If you want to catch more fish, then fish where the fish are. Salespeople who are addicted to instant gratification fish in the wrong ponds. You can have the best pole, bait, and gear, but if your fishing hole is only full of minnows, you will not catch a trout.

When conducting a win-loss analysis with clients, the first question we ask is, “Should you have been at the appointment in the first place?” No amount of hard selling skills will help you win business if you are showing up to meetings with prospects who don’t fit your ideal client profile.

Analysis of your business requires that you be skilled in delayed gratification because you need to take time to evaluate your best clients, determine what makes them good clients, and then apply that information to identifying future sales opportunities.

Can you describe your best-fit clients? These are clients you enjoy working with and wish you had twenty more just like them. There are two areas to examine when identifying your best-fit clients: demographics and psychographics.

Demographics includes criteria such as revenue, number of employees, locations, SIC code, and stage of growth. What is often missed in the analysis is an equally important criterion called psychographics, which classifies clients by their attitudes and values.

When we help salespeople analyze their sales activity plan, we start by asking them to describe their favorite client. Here are the attributes we hear 90 percent of the time:

  They value relationships, expertise, and shortcuts.

  They value outside counsel and outsourcing.

  They treat their suppliers like partners, not vendors.

  They treat their employees well.

  They are involved in philanthropic causes.

  They are proactive in seeking solutions.

  They value relationships.

  They genuinely value expertise.

  They are committed to win-win relationships.

Note that all of the items listed above are psychographics, not demographics. It’s important to include both in your analysis of where to fish.

Like our clients, we are charged with prospecting and closing business. Otherwise, we have no one to train and coach. We have found two key psychographics that raise our close ratios. The first is that our potential client believes in hiring outside advice. They are not “do-it-yourself-ers.” The second psychographic they possess is that they view education and training as an investment, not an expense. When we have those two criteria in place, our close ratios go up by as much as 30 percent because we are fishing in the right pond.

We work with an investment banking firm, Capital Value Advisors. When we conducted this exercise with them, they shared one of their key qualification criteria: the NJR rule. Translation: No Jerk Rule. CVA knows they win more business and get better results when they work with nice people (not jerks) who treat them like partners and value their expertise. This might be criteria you want to consider adding to your qualification list.

Review your business and analyze your “fish.” Determine where you and your company play best and win business. Analysis takes time and does not feed the instant-gratification monster. Think of those four-year-olds and don’t be a sales marshmallow grabber.

Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan

Salespeople start out with the good intention of prospecting each week. The problem is, their calendars don’t reflect this intention. When we work with sales teams and ask them to tell us the times they have scheduled in their calendars for prospecting, the usual response is, “Uh, I haven’t taken the time to calendar-block my schedule.” In other words, there is no plan for proactive prospecting. Pretty soon a month goes by, very few hours of focused prospecting occurs, and the sales pipeline experiences yet another drought.

Before you invest in one more timesaving gadget or time management training seminar, examine the biggest timesaver at your disposal: your ability to delay the gratification of doing something fun and exciting instead of planning and organizing. One more gadget or course in time management is not going to help if you don’t develop your delayed-gratification skills. You must put in the work of planning before you will get the reward of a day or a week that runs efficiently.

Planning your work week means you have to slow down and think. As Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few people engage in it.” It’s recognizing that you will not get the same adrenaline rush with planning as you do when helping a client with a customer service issue or running an appointment. Planning requires delayed-gratification skills because the reward for a full sales pipeline and consistent sales results are in the future, not that day or week.

Once you have made the commitment to plan, block out specific times for proactive prospecting and honor those times as if they were gold, because they are!

Emotion Management and Planning

Successful salespeople score high in managing their emotions. They don’t overreact to positive or negative selling situations because they are aware of triggers that cause such responses and make a conscious choice on how they want to show up each day. Emotion management is important in your prospecting efforts and here’s why.

Pete attends a time management workshop and learns to set specific times for prospecting on his calendar. His new discipline is rewarded and he connects with a prospect by phone. They have a good conversation and Pete suggests that he and the prospect meet. The prospect says she is free next week, exactly during the hour Pete has set aside for prospecting. Pete gets excited (doesn’t manage his emotions), gives up his committed hour, and sets the appointment. He is now headed down the path of sporadic prospecting and cyclical sales results.

Top salespeople manage their emotions and their calendars. In this situation, they simply reply, “Ms. Prospect, unfortunately I am booked at that time. I am open at 2:00 P.M. that day—would that time work for you?”

Use your delayed-gratification skills and emotion management to plan your work and work your plan.

Drive-By Relationships

In a high-tech world, instant gratification is everywhere. We have same-day delivery, instant messaging, and drive-through restaurants. Things are getting less personal and people are trained to expect and get quick results. The problem in the sales profession is that you are dealing with human beings, not things. We remind our clients that processes are efficient, but relationship building is not.

Salespeople are taught to build networks and relationships with referral partners. Both are powerful strategies for finding new prospects and filling the sales pipeline. Research shows that a salesperson referred into an opportunity increases her close ratio by as much as 50 percent over a cold lead.

The bad news is that this strategy is not well executed by most salespeople due to their inability to build relationships.

Salespeople possessing high interpersonal skills value people and take time to build and retain relationships. They have the ability to give and take in order to create meaningful social interactions because relationships are built over time, not in a first meeting. (Do you really think someone is going to introduce you to their best client if they don’t know you or trust you?) The strategy of building referral partners and relationships applies whether you are meeting with a potential partner in person or online in the new Sales 2.0 world.

Salespeople with high interpersonal skills are connected and are connectors. These good relationship builders ask themselves two questions every day:

1.  Who is the best/right person for me to connect with today to help me grow my business?

2.  What can I do today to help a colleague or client grow their business?

When a company meets with us to discuss referral or networking training, the first question we are asked is, “Can you teach my sales team how to get more referrals?” There are definitely hard selling skills needed for success; however, sales training alone generates fewer results if there is not an equal emphasis on soft skills training.

The first skill we teach in referral partner training is the “give goal.” This is a powerful tool for building and keeping relationships. The give goal means you set a weekly sales activity metric for giving and helping clients, colleagues, or referral partners. Generosity is a key trait found in salespeople with high interpersonal skills because they genuinely care about their clients and partners.

Giving can be introducing your client to a potential prospect. It can be sending an article of interest that will help clients or partners in their business. It can be inviting them to an event to meet other prospects or partners. Host a joint webinar and send an invitation to both of your customer databases. Set a meeting to go over your client list to see what introductions are of value.

We have a give goal of five at our office, where we strive to make a deposit in our clients’ and referral partners’ “relationship account” five times each week. We know it works because our sales pipeline is full.

The give goal is also based on research from Dr. Robert B. Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Harper-Business, rev. ed., 2006). Dr. Cialdini discusses six principles of influence in his book, one being reciprocity. His research shows that when you give a person something, he feels obligated to reciprocate. Salespeople who practice the give goal reap the reward of partners and clients wanting to reciprocate.

Case in point: When you receive free, personalized address labels from a nonprofit organization, do you feel obligated to write a check in order to keep the labels? I do. That’s the principle of reciprocity at work.

Here are just a few questions to ask yourself to see if you are acting as a connector, a giver, and a relationship builder:

  Do you know your referral partners’/clients’ value proposition? (If you don’t, how can you give good introductions?)

  Do you know your referral partners’/clients’ goals for the current year? (If you don’t, how can you identify opportunities?)

  Have you set a goal for giving referrals? (Are you a giver or a taker?)

  How many lunches have you set up to introduce your referral partner(s) to other partners, clients, or prospects? (Or are you too busy to connect?)

  How many calls of introduction have you made on behalf of your partners or clients? (Or do you subscribe to the lazy way of networking by saying, “Call Joe and use my name.”)

Sales Reality Check

Let’s flip to the other side of the sales equation and talk about the hard-working salesperson who does all the right stuff. This is the salesperson who calendar-blocks, prospects consistently, and is a good partner for her clients and colleagues. Her sales pipeline is full but revenue goals are not being achieved. The underlying problem for her lack of sales results is a combination of soft and hard sales skills.

Here’s the scenario. Jill is a disciplined salesperson. Her consistent prospecting pays off and she connects with a prospect. During the conversation, the prospect shares his pain, telling Jill, “We are getting really lousy customer service. We think it might be a good time to look at other vendors.” Jill lets her emotions get the best of her and gets excited. She “buys the buying signal.” As a result, she gets sloppy in her qualification process, and quickly sets an appointment before the prospect changes his mind.

Jill puts the prospect into the sales pipeline and shows up to the appointment. After an hour of conversation, the prospect decides it’s only fair to give the existing vendor one more chance. After all, they have been doing business with this vendor for ten years. Jill just wasted her time with a suspect, not a prospect. What went wrong?

Hope Versus Reality

In order for Jill to achieve better sales results she needs to improve her qualifying skills by developing the emotional intelligence skill of reality testing. Simply put, this is the ability to see things objectively instead of as what you hope or wish they would be.

We discuss this skill a lot with clients because it’s easy for salespeople to get excited when a prospect shares a challenge or shows interest. It’s important to remember that an interested prospect is just that—interested, not qualified.

Salespeople scoring high in reality testing ask both tough and real-world questions. They know hope is not an effective selling skill. If a prospect has been working with another vendor for ten years, he must be able to convince you during the qualifying conversation that there is enough pain to switch relationships.

For example, “Mr. Prospect, I can understand your frustration with ABC company. However, you’ve been doing business with them for ten years and relationships are important. Is this problem really big enough for you to take a look at switching vendors or do you just need to have another conversation with ABC company?”

Now it may shock you that the salesperson has given the prospect an out, a reason to say no. What is he thinking? This rep values his time and is testing the reality of the situation. He is conducting a sales conversation that is a real-world and honest one. (Do you like switching vendors for phones, insurance, or financial planning? I don’t.) Switching vendors can be a hassle, and many of us put off making a change. Your prospects aren’t any different. It’s the salesperson’s responsibility to manage emotions and test the reality to determine if this prospect is just whining or really ready to make a change.

Top salespeople don’t live in the land of hope and denial. They test the reality of a potential opportunity to make sure they are running an appointment with prospects, not suspects.

Are You Stressed Out?

Every salesperson has experienced a drought in their prospecting activity. You know, it’s when every prospect you talk to says, “I’m happy with my existing supplier,” “We have no money,” or “I am new on the job—can you call me in six months?” Repeated dead ends can be stressful and negative self-talk sets in. “No one is buying, I must be losing my touch” or “I wish I had a better product to sell.” (It’s always nice to blame the company.)

Stress is caused by our perception of an event rather than the event itself. When the economy tanked in 2008, salespeople who scored high in stress tolerance said, “Good, this tough economy will get rid of some of our less qualified competitors.” Their perception of the event was positive, not negative.

Prolonged stress produces cortisol, a stress hormone that over time results in fatigue and lack of creativity. The stressed-out salesperson doesn’t have the energy to prospect or the ability to see new ways of bringing in business. Sales activity falls off, as do sales results.

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”

Salespeople scoring high in the emotional intelligence skill of stress tolerance have the ability to withstand adverse events without developing physical or emotional symptoms. They bounce back quickly after setbacks and disappointments. These salespeople generally score high in optimism, firmly believing that tomorrow or next week will yield better results.

When working with these top performers, we find they look at life through a different filter, one that allows them to be positive about future sales results, even in difficult times. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.” Franklin sounds like he was an emotionally intelligent man.

Here are three thought processes we have noted in salespeople who manage stress and, as a result, consistently achieve sales results.

1.  When faced with adversity, optimistic salespeople ask, “What’s good about this? Where’s the lesson that is going to serve me well when I go after the next big opportunity?” Top salespeople know that adversity builds character. Adversity is also where the greatest lessons for future success are learned. These salespeople know that when the going gets tough, most salespeople go—to try and find greener pastures. Top salespeople don’t look for greener pastures; they make greener pastures.

2.  Optimistic salespeople choose their friends wisely. Jim Rohn, the late entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker, once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” This quote isn’t just motivational rhetoric. Psychologists know that emotions can spread. The clinical term is “emotional contagion” or “transmission of moods.” Research has shown that people will start acting and responding like the people they spend time with. Look around. Are you hanging around with naysayers or yes-doers? Are you hanging around excuse makers or revenue producers? Mom was right. Tell me who your friends are and we will tell you what you are like.

3.  Top salespeople use humor to relieve stress and stressful situations. When I started in the sales training business, I made a minimum of twenty-five cold calls a day. At times, it could get tedious with no answers or flat-out noes. I learned to inject humor by starting the call with, “Hi, it’s Colleen Stanley. This is a cold call. You may want to hang up.” The response was always a laugh and permission to deliver my value proposition. I always asked for a referral even after I got a no. During one cold call, the prospect asked, “Why in the world would I refer you? I don’t even know you.” I replied, “I know you don’t, but if you did, you would love me.” The prospect and I had a good laugh. He still didn’t give me a referral; however, the humorous exchange went a long way toward alleviating the stress often associated with cold-calling.

Prospecting is part of your sales job and it doesn’t have to be stressful. Change your perception toward prospecting and you’ll change your outcomes.

The Neuroscience of Prospecting

Most sales training doesn’t even address selling to the old brain when trying to improve prospecting results. As a result, many hardworking salespeople get discouraged because their prospecting efforts are not paying off.

A key selling tool used in prospecting is the delivery of a value proposition. Whether you are networking, email prospecting, cold calling, or writing marketing copy, the value proposition is the sales conversation starter.

One of the biggest mistakes in selling to the old brain starts with how value propositions are created. The typical value proposition is very logical and focused on the seller’s benefits, not the buyer’s challenges: “We have been in business fifty years, have good customer service, and a deep bench of expertise.” Besides being very boring, this approach lacks emotion. People buy emotionally, not logically, and the old brain is the emotional center of the brain.

Good value propositions need to create “word pictures” in order to influence and persuade the old brain because the old brain doesn’t connect emotionally with intangible information. It needs tangible input. The old brain also likes information that is visual. Neuroscientists have shown that the old brain receives images much quicker than other stimuli, which is why value propositions need to paint word pictures of the problems you can solve for potential clients.

For example, a value proposition that states, “We can improve efficiency and output by decreasing downtime in your production lines,” is using intangible language and doesn’t really paint a picture of the problem the prospect is experiencing.

Tangible language creates a picture where the prospect can visualize the problem you can solve for him: “We work with companies that are frustrated with production lines jamming and, as a result, have a lot people standing around getting paid to do nothing.” Do you see the difference in the two statements? Which one stirred an emotional response in you?

Selling to the old brain means you must use the same language your prospects use in their daily life. The old brain likes familiarity, and intangible language is not familiar. A value proposition must sound the way your prospect thinks and speaks. We call it “layman’s language.” How many of you go home and say you had a productive, efficient, and streamlined day? No, you probably go home and say, “I got a lot of stuff done today.” Use everyday language when crafting value propositions to better connect with prospects and the old brain.

Let’s look at the difference between intangible and tangible, everyday value propositions:

INTANGIBLE: We have superior customer service.

TANGIBLE: We work with clients who are tired of wasting time stuck in voicemail trees and never talk to a live human being. (Can you see a picture of a person on hold?)

INTANGIBLE: We help companies win more business.

TANGIBLE: We work with companies who are tired of losing to price after spending hours working on a proposal. (Can you see a picture of a salesperson sitting at his office, late at night, writing a proposal?)

INTANGIBLE: We have a one-stop solution for our customers.

TANGIBLE: We work with companies that are tired of managing multiple vendors and piles of invoices. The accounting department wastes a lot of time trying to figure out who to call when a service issue comes up. (Can you see a picture of a person looking at a stack of invoices or making a bunch of phone calls?)

There’s a reason for the expression, “Pictures paint a thousand words.” Get good at painting word pictures when developing your value propositions. When your words help the old brain see the problem you can help solve, your prospect is more likely to engage in a sales conversation.

Action Steps for Improving Your Prospecting Results

Consistent and effective prospecting is key in order for you to hit desired revenue goals. It is a common best practice that we see in top sales professionals. They don’t wait for their sales managers to “get on them” to do the work because they know that business development is their responsibility, their job. Here are a few tips for improving this important selling stage.

1.  Make a decision.

2.  Ask yourself the tough questions.

3.  Plan for success.

4.  Manage your emotions.

5.  Get an accountability partner or a coach.

Step #1: Make a Decision

This statement will be a recurring theme throughout the book. Make a decision on whether or not you want to be in sales and are willing to do the work required of the entire job, not just the parts you like. We’ve discussed reality testing in this chapter, so here’s a reality check. All professionals have parts of their job they don’t like. Can you imagine a doctor saying she doesn’t like dealing with insurance companies so she is just going to treat patients and ignore the paperwork? Or an accountant saying he doesn’t like the hours that go with tax season, so he goes home early during this busy time of year? You’d say that’s ridiculous behavior because that’s what these professionals are paid to do. Top salespeople are paid to prospect so it’s equally ridiculous behavior if they don’t do it.

Step #2: Ask Yourself the Tough Questions

Are you a marshmallow grabber looking for instant returns without putting in the daily and weekly sales activity necessary for results? Are you taking time to develop relationships with potential partners or trying to shortcut that whole relationship thing? What’s your attitude and self-talk like when adversity hits? Do you sound like a winner or a whiner? Asking tough questions requires emotional self-awareness in order to answer the questions honestly. Get some downtime and figure out if and where you need to change your attitudes and behaviors.

Next, ask yourself questions to determine your why and what.

1.  Why do you want to make more money?

2.  What are you willing to do to reach your income potential?

Examining your why and what involves the emotional intelligence skills of reality testing and emotional self-awareness. Where is the objective data that shows you are willing to do the work of prospecting, skill training, and relationship building? Have you taken any time to think about your why and what?

Take this reality test to see if you are doing what it takes to elevate your selling skills and results:

  Do you read or listen to an average of two business/sales books a month? (Or do you go home and watch reality TV?)

  Do you seek advice from mentors, boss, and colleagues? (Or do you use the excuse that “successful people are too busy to meet with me”?)

  Do you practice selling and influence skills two hours a week? (Or do you keep running very average sales meetings that end in “we’ll think it over” or “your price is too high”?)

  Do you write down your yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily goals with specific action steps and deadlines? (Or do you say what average salespeople say: “They’re in my head”?)

  Do you attend a minimum of two educational workshops each year that help you grow personally and professionally? (Or do you wait for someone else to invest in you?)

  Have you increased your sales activity to compensate for longer buy cycles? (Or are you waiting for the good old days to return?)

A sales training colleague, Dave Tear, shares this statement with his clients who are not executing their business development plan: “I’m listening to what you’re saying and I’m watching what you’re doing. What I’m hearing is not matching what I’m seeing.” Dave teaches his clients reality testing by pointing out that their actions and words don’t align.

Step #3: Plan for Success

Use your delayed-gratification skills and put together a business development plan. A critical component of this plan is to establish key performance metrics for each activity. Numbers don’t lie and, without them, you can’t tell if you are running ahead or behind your plan. It’s the number one way to test your reality and keep you from relying on hope as a strategy.

Few salespeople and sales teams have a quantifiable plan. When we ask potential clients about their prospecting plan, we hear vague answers such as, “We do some LinkedIn, some networking, some trade shows, and some cold calling.” “Some” is not a number, so we don’t know if they are doing one sales activity or ten sales activities a month.

For example, a specific business development plan could be:

  125 outreaches a week—cold calls, warm calls, email prospecting.

  One marketing touch with your top ten prospects. Send a link to an article of interest, invite him or her to a webinar, send an e-book, or make a phone call of introduction.

  Attend six networking events a month.

  Meet with two potential referral partners a month to discuss mutual business opportunities.

  Contact a client with something of relevance other than trying to sell them something.

  Write two blogs a week.

  Work on LinkedIn connections two hours a week.

  Write one article a month.

  Set a give goal—help a colleague or client five times a week with something that helps them grow their business.

Top salespeople usually have five or six different ways to generate opportunities each month. They know that one month, this particular business development activity will yield results, and the next month, a different activity will yield results. It’s like a good financial portfolio because the prospecting plan is diversified.

Here’s another reality check. Consistent prospecting is in your full control. A bad economy, strife overseas, or arguments between political parties in government does not prevent you from making calls and connections.

Step #4: Manage Your Emotions

More than once we have heard a salesperson say, “I just didn’t feel like prospecting today. I wasn’t in the mood.” (Let’s hope your biggest competitor doesn’t feel like prospecting that day either.)

Top salespeople don’t always feel like prospecting. The difference is that they prospect regardless of how they feel because they don’t allow emotions to run their life.

Good salespeople manage their emotions by managing their self-talk. Self-talk is what you say to yourself, and the conversation can be positive or negative. There is endless research that shows what you think and say to yourself impacts your actions. Negative self-talk, as it relates to prospecting, sounds like, “No one is buying in this economy, I’m going to get stuck with a tough gatekeeper, they already have an existing vendor, my decision makers are really tough buyers, and no one is going to answer the phone or my email.” And guess what, you are right. Because whatever you say to yourself long enough becomes the truth. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Positive self-talk sounds like:

  “Successful salespeople do what unsuccessful salespeople won’t do. Plan, prospect, and prospect some more.”

  “The race is not to the swift but to those who keep on running.”

  “Do the upfront work so you can do the fun work.”

  “I am willing to put in the work to earn the reward.”

  “Prospects are open to hearing what I have to say because I can make them money and make their life easier.”

  “Everyone I talk to is friendly and open to a conversation.”

  “I always find prospects that are ready to buy and invest money.”

You get to choose the conversation, and top salespeople choose the positive.

Step #5: Get an Accountability Partner or a Coach

There is a reason Weight Watchers is one of the most successful weight-loss programs in the country. They have weekly check-ins on progress of weight loss to hold everyone accountable. Find someone with whom you can engage in a no-excuses call on sales activity and results every week.

When I started in the sales training business, I had a colleague who was one year ahead of me in the business. He sent me his activity plan and results from his first year. The plan was pinned on my office wall where I could see it every day. When I didn’t feel like doing the activity, I reminded myself that if Bob could do it, I could do it.

So what are you waiting for? There are prospects who need your services. Today is the day to let them know how you and your company can be of service. As an early mentor once told me, “The only time you can fail in prospecting is if you fail to prospect.”