Virtually every business owner or sales manager have I have ever coached or consulted has listed lack of consistent prospecting by their sales organization as one of the most damaging issues facing their company. This pervasive issue has a long term, crippling financial impact on both companies and their sales people.

While few managers would disagree that this is a major problem, most of them have little understanding of why this is a problem or how to solve it.

Why don’t salespeople consistently prospect?

Fear of rejection. Most prospecting behaviors produce a different result than the positive response sales people were hoping or expecting to get? This experience is internalized by the salesperson as some kind of personal failure. This internalization by the sales person makes no sense and only occurs because the sales person has confused external validation by the buyer with personal worth.

Solution: Help your sales person psychologically reframe their expectation of prospecting and instead of being the rejectee teach them to become the rejector.

Lack of organization and planning. Most sales people, because of their extroverted personalities, do not have natural organizational and self management skills. They tend to “cock and fire” instead of taking time to develop plans, organize, schedule and execute. The result of their scattered approach is that they waste many hours which could be used to prospect for new business.

Solution: Teach and require all of your sales people to submit written plans and schedules of their activities each week.

Not held accountable by management. Most sales mangers have not developed an effective process that holds their sales people accountable to do the necessary prospecting behaviors. They don’t know how or are too busy or disinterested to provide the proper coaching and supervision needed by their sales people.

Solution: Implement a sales management process that teaches and requires sales managers to plan and schedule one on one coaching each week with each sales person.

Lack of knowledge or lack of skill. Most companies don’t offer proper training or coaching on the importance of prospecting, how to develop a prospecting plan, improving personal effectiveness, creative visioning, developing a template of ideal clients, etc.

Solution: Develop a culture and philosophy of continuous, never ending improvement and invest the time and money to make that a reality.

And the biggest one of all is the absence of clearly defined, personally compelling goals. All the other things pale in comparison to this one.

The person who has a passionate goal will not be side tracked by rejection, will not need to be held accountable and will succeed in spite of a lack of organizational skills or knowledge. While all of these things will facilitate success they are not requirements for success.

A sales person who is passionate, focused and committed will go out and
beat on enough doors until they make it happen. More than anything else when you see call reluctance on a sales person’s part it’s because they’re not passionate about going to the next level or achieving the next goal. They have somehow gotten comfortable with the results that their current behavior is producing for them. And as long as they’re satisfied with the results of their current prospecting activities and can live off of the income that’s generated from those activities they won’t increase their prospecting behaviors.

Solution: Spend time helping your sales people answer this question.

Do you have a clearly defined, specific goal that requires you to make more money than you are currently making? Are you absolutely passionate about it? Are you committed enough to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal as long as it’s legal, moral and honest? How can I help you achieve that goal?

Until they can answer WHY the how is unimportant.

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Many of the world’s best sales forces are the best because they have developed and use a systematic sales process. Having a map of the things that have to happen before a sale can be made provides a framework for sales planning and activity, reduces mistakes, and shortens new hire ramp-up time. However, what is conspicuously absent from most of these process maps are the things that prospective customers have to do each step of the way in order to buy. The truth is that the things that are done at any particular step or stage in the process could be a complete waste of time if the client doesn’t do what they must do to move forward to the next step or stage in their buying process.

As sales professionals, you don’t retire quota or earn commissions for anything that you do. You get paid on what your prospects do. When they sign a contract or issue a purchase order, then you make some money. You have to accept that you cannot control your prospects.

Account Managers or Sales Managers often ask, “What do we have to do to close this deal?” That is the wrong question. What you should be asking is, “What does the prospect have to do in order to buy?” and then the follow-on question is, “What do we have to do to get them to do those things?”

Whether or not you have or follow a systematic sales process, you should endeavor to understand and document your prospect’s buying process. You must understand not only the things that have to happen throughout the selection and approval process, but who will be involved along the way.

Armed with a thorough understanding of the steps and stages of your prospects buying process, you can plan your work accordingly. Then every single move you make can be made with the specific intent of enabling or empowering your prospect to take the next step they need to take in order to buy.

In order for you and the buyer to understand the buying process, you need to ask questions. Lots of questions. Here are some questions that will help you and the buyer define and clarify what has to happen before a decision will be made:

1. What kind of results are you having with your current advertising campaign?

2. If your current campaign is not providing for you what you need it to how do you plan on discovering if another campaign might work better?

3. How have you managed to do so well in spite of the fact that you are not receiving from your current campaign what you really need?

4. How did you come to accept these less than satisfactory results from your existing campaign? What needs to happen before you and the other decision makers in this company will decide to do something different?

5. Can your existing advertising provide the results needed to take your business to the next level? If so, what has stopped it from providing the results before?

6. What do you and the other decision makers need to know or understand before you will be willing to solve this problem?

7. Since bringing in a new advertising strategy and plan would necessitate changes, what would your decision team need to understand before they’d be willing to help you through the change process?

8. What would they need to see or hear before they would be able to understand that this new process would not create chaos for them?

9. What I hear you saying is that you need blah, blah and blah from me to have the confidence that we can help you. Is that correct? What would you like for me to do next?

Before you proceed to any next step, you should know and understand exactly what has to happen next in their buying process, and what you’re going to do to make that happen. If you spend the time and money to go visit a prospect without a plan of what you intend to say and do to help them take the next step in their buying process then you are little more than a professional visitor.

Defining and documenting a useful map of our prospects buying process will take time, it will take effort, and it will require that you reach, qualify, and sell to all of the people who will play a part in the selection and approval process. You will need a lot of input and perspective because simply accepting any one person’s opinion of their process leaves too many variables to chance and ultimately leaves you with too much exposure and opportunity for failure. Taking the time to thoroughly understand all of the things that the prospect needs to do in order to buy often makes the difference between the very successful and those who simply get by.

Good Selling

Steve Clark
PS Want to become a Jedi Master?

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What you do between now and the end of the year will impact your 1st quarter of 2007 greatly.

What are you going to do between now and the end of the year?

Here are some questions for you to ponder, reflect and hopefully act on.

How many prospects do you want to contact between now and Dec. 31st?

1. Based on your closing percentages how many 1st time conversations will you need to have to hit your production goals? How many do you need per week?
   
2. How many names do you have on your written prospect list TODAY? (Hint – you need to have more than the answer to question number 1).
   
3. If you do not have enough names on your prospect list when will you sit down and work on your list?
   
4. What is your prospecting plan? You do have a written prospecting plan for the 4th quarter don’t you? Is it broken down into measurable, weekly activity?
   
5. How will you track and keep score of your activity?
   
6. Have you made daily appointments with yourself to prospect? Are they written in your calendar?

I urge you to sit down and devote some quality time to answer these questions and make a plan. After all In the absence of clearly defined goals and objectives anything becomes acceptable.

You are better than that.

Good Selling

Steve Clark

Read About Steve Clark

What you do between now and the end of the year will impact your 1st quarter of 2007 greatly.

What are you going to do between now and the end of the year?

Here are some questions for you to ponder, reflect and hopefully act on.

How many prospects do you want to contact between now and Dec. 31st?

1. Based on your closing percentages how many 1st time conversations will you need to have to hit your production goals? How many do you need per week?
   
2. How many names do you have on your written prospect list TODAY? (Hint – you need to have more than the answer to question number 2).
   
3. If you do not have enough names on your prospect list when will you sit down and work on your list?
   
4. What is your prospecting plan? You do have a written prospecting plan for the 4th quarter don’t you? Is it broken down into measurable, weekly activity?
   
5. How will you track and keep score of your activity?
   
6. Have you made daily appointments with yourself to prospect? Are they written in your calendar?

I urge you to sit down and devote some quality time to answer these questions and make a plan. After all In the absence of clearly defined goals and objectives anything becomes acceptable.

You are better than that.

Good Selling

Steve Clark

Read About Steve Clark

What you do between now and the end of the year will impact your 1st quarter of 2007 greatly.

What are you going to do between now and the end of the year?

Here are some questions for you to ponder, reflect and hopefully act on.

How many prospects do you want to contact between now and Dec. 31st?

1. Based on your closing percentages how many 1st time conversations will you need to have to hit your production goals? How many do you need per week?
   
2. How many names do you have on your written prospect list TODAY? (Hint – you need to have more than the answer to question number 2).
   
3. If you do not have enough names on your prospect list when will you sit down and work on your list?
   
4. What is your prospecting plan? You do have a written prospecting plan for the 4th quarter don’t you? Is it broken down into measurable, weekly activity?
   
5. How will you track and keep score of your activity?
   
6. Have you made daily appointments with yourself to prospect? Are they written in your calendar?

I urge you to sit down and devote some quality time to answer these questions and make a plan. After all In the absence of clearly defined goals and objectives anything becomes acceptable.

You are better than that.

Good Selling

Steve Clark

Read About Steve Clark

According to accepted neuroscience, we have three brains: our brain stem, which controls motor function, our limbic or emotional brain and our neo cortex or rational thinking brain.

Our limbic, emotional brain, which is some 400 million years older than our neo cortex is primitive. Its purpose is to ensure survival, and all the complicated emotions and behaviors that survival implies.  It is here that our basest of instincts thrive: sex, fury, fight. It is short term oriented, visual, concrete and self centered, and it is not designed to deal with abstract, complex concepts and ideas.

Ruled by the limbic brain, our ancestors were obsessed with consuming vital resources to keep them alive. They were consumption oriented not savings oriented. They were short term, immediate gratification oriented. They never thought about storing and saving because they never knew if they were going to survive from one day to the next. Consequently, they consumed not saved.

According to Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University, "There isn't necessarily a stop mechanism in us that says, Relax, you've got enough. We've evolved to be maximizing machines."

For our ancestors the best way to save for the future was to consume now. Eating as much as they could, whenever they could, they were able to store extra calories in their bodies, in the hopes that this would carry them through any lean times that lay ahead.

This ancestrally dominated mindset has created many modern day problems: the tendency to spend and consume without any regard to the long term consequences, the addiction to instant gratification and the rejection of self denial and sacrifice, lack of patience and civility in society, micro term decision making by business and political leaders and on and on and on.
                        
According to  some evolutionary psychologists, our thinking, analytical, neo cortex brain has not evolved to keep pace with our complex, break neck speed society. Consequently, we are trying to cope in a complicated, frenetic world by using a brain that was designed to deal with much more basic human needs.

If our rational, analytical, thinking neo-cortex were truly in charge of our behavior we would engage in rational, intelligent, and civilized ways, but one does not have to look far to see the consequences of a society void of rational thought and dominated by the short term, emotionally motivated limbic brain.

Next time you make a decision, any decision, ask yourself  is this a thoroughly planned, rationally thought out decision or am I making a decision based on short term, emotional gratification? If you are truly self aware and honest your answer will astound you.

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My friend Steve Rae makes some good points in his post about voice mail. His post details how to leave a proper voice mail with someone that you have had some previous contact.

But what about how to leave a voice mail with a prospect that you have never spoken with? That's a horse of a different color.

If, as Steve says and I believe, most voice mails are deleted in 20 seconds or less, what do you say to get people, who don't know you, to call you back?

First let's look at the typical message left by a sales rep:

Hello, Mr. Prospect this is John Smith with Technology Services. We are a national provider of internet services and I am calling today to tell you about some exciting programs we have for small business owners. Please call me at 555-1212 at your earliest convenience. Thank you and have a great day.

What is the problem with this approach?

It gives the listener too much information. The second the listener hears the name of your company and what you do they form a premature opinion about whether they need what you are selling and they hit the delete button.

RULE: The chances of getting a return call are directly proportional to how   

            much information you leave.

If you want to increase your odds of a prospect calling you back leave this message:

John, this is Steve Clark. As soon as you get a minute, please give me a call at 850-936-7028.

This works for several reasons:

• It is hard to ignore because it doesn't provide the listener with excess information
• The listener doesn't know if you are a prospect, vendor, referral or customer and there is a bit of fear about not returning that type of call.
• It piques the listener's curiosity.

When leaving this message tonality is the key. You will want to slow down your rate of speech, lower your voice and project a confident business like tone.

Will this approach work every time? Absolutely not.

Will it work most of the time? Absolutely not?

Will it work a lot better than what you now do? You bet your sweet bippy.

 
Read More of Steve's posts.
or watch his video.

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