Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It’s Only Common Sense: Yes, You Do Have to Prospect!

Yes, you must prospect. I know you hate to prospect and you hate to make cold calls, but this is what we have to talk about today, whether you like it or not.

To help us, we have a great new book by Mark Hunter called High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results. Published by Amacom, this trade paperback is a first-rate guide to making sure that you squeeze everything you can out of your prospecting. If you are in sales, I am not going to ask you to read this book; I am not going to urge you to read this book. No, I am going to order you to read this book. This is the best book on prospecting since I read Fanatical Prospecting, a book by Hunter’s buddy Jeb Blount. Yes, I hereby order you to read that one as well.

Look, there are no two ways about it: Prospecting is one of the key elements, if not the key element, of doing a great sales job. You have to find new customers and to do that you have to prospect. Now, don’t bother listing excuses and myths about prospecting and why you can’t do it and why it doesn’t work in today’s market, because I have heard them all, as has Mark Hunter. Actually, to save you time, he has listed these excuses, and here they are, with a few of my own for good measure.

Myth 1. One and done: A voicemail does not constitute a cold call. You have to keep at it until you actually talk to someone.  And by the way, a ton of e-mails won’t do it either; they are useful to warm up an upcoming cold call, but they are not a real cold call. You have to actually talk to someone to begin the sales process.

Myth 2. I’ll prospect when I’m done taking care of my customers: If you believe this, you will never call on new customers. No, let the shop take care of your customers and you can go find some new ones. 

Myth 3. It’s impossible to have dedicated time to prospect: Yeah, right. Make the time to prospect; it is the most important thing you’ll do all day.

Myth 4. We’ve made it this long without prospecting: As Mark Hunter says in his book, “This myth will sink your company.” This myth has already sunk many other companies. Look, you need new customers, even if your company is doing a great job and you have many long-term customers…stuff happens, companies are bought, companies go out of business or decide to go in a different direction. If you are not always out there getting new customers, you will run out of business and it will be sooner than you think.

Myth 5. If we provide great customer service to our existing customers, we won’t have to prospect: Of course, great customer service is essential to your success but you still need to always be prospecting for new customers. Check Myth 4 for the reason.

Myth 6. Only “born salespeople” can prospect: No, with a set of skills and a lot of heart, courage and hard work, not to mention patience, anyone can be a successful prospector. That’s a fact.

Now I am going to add a few myths of my own.

Myth 7. If we build a great product, they will come: Ah, my personal favorite! No, unless your product is a baseball field in an Iowa cornfield, they will not come. You have to tell someone about your products and services for them to want to talk to you, and as a salesperson this is your Number One responsibility.

Myth 8.  No one wants to see me anymore; they are all too busy to see me, so it’s much too hard to make appointments: Actually, this is more of an excuse than a myth. Yes, it is true that it is much harder to see people than it has ever been, but that’s just too bad. Your job as a salesperson is to find a way to make it happen. If it’s hard for you to see a buyer, it is just as hard for your competitor, so you’re on a level playing field. You have to figure out how to see people and how to get your point across on a phone call or even through your voicemail. You must whet the potential customer’s appetite enough to make him want to see you.

I think by now you’re getting the point. As salespeople, we have to prospect. We have to get out there and get in front of new customers. We have to get more involved in lead generation, prospecting, cold calling, first sales calls and getting that first quote and winning that first order. This is want we do.

For the next couple of week, I am going to dedicate this column to working with you on successful prospecting techniques and I am going to use Hunter’s excellent book as a guide. I’d recommend that you get a copy of High-Profit Prospecting and follow along because there is no way that I am going to cover everything in this book in 900 words each week.

Next time, we’ll talk about successful factors in lead generation, and you are not going to want to miss it. Meanwhile, stop coming up with your own set of myths about why prospecting doesn’t work and get to work on prospecting right now. Try it; you’ll like it. It’s only common sense.