Guide to Prospecting - The Path to Sales Success in any Economic Environment
This post contains highlights and excerpts from Bradley Hartmann’s field manual Prospecting (FM11-18). Be sure to check out the full manual in our store.
Prospecting:
Introduction to prospecting:
The sales activity of prospecting is the one thing that, when done daily with intentionality, will guarantee your success – provided that you never, ever stop. If you stop prospecting, your failure is all but guaranteed.
Read that again because it's the single most important thing you need to remember about sales.
Predictable sales success in any economic environment comes from:
Relentlessly prospecting
Maintaining your mindset
Knowing your numbers
Preparing with purpose
Picking up the phone
We will break down each one of these elements in this guide. For more detail check out our Prospecting field manual and training course.
Prospecting is any legitimate attempt to start a business conversation to help someone eliminate their needs, fears, and pain, or take advantage of opportunities for growth that could result in a verbal no.
Any time you put yourself in a position where you could hear the word no, that's a legitimate prospecting effort. And since your effort is the only thing you can control, that’s what you’ll focus on.
You must risk a no to earn a yes.
Business is earned from building relationships. And building relationships requires conversations in real-time, ideally face-to-face, in-person, or online.
It’s a Numbers Game
The Law of averages dictates that a particular outcome (say, earning new business) will, over a long-enough timeline, match the probability of the outcome occurring.
Things tend to average out, including and especially, your sales performance.
The Law of Large Numbers dictates that if you have a sufficiently large sample size, outcomes will average out over time. These laws are the reason prospecting is the single most important sales activity determining your success.
The Law of Averages
The Law of Large Numbers
—----------------------------------
Guaranteed sales success over the long term
If you prospect daily with intention and never, ever stop … sooner or later these two laws will converge on your success.
Your Mindset
The 2 states of a sales pro
There are 2 states of being for a sales pro:
Prospecting
Prospecting avoidance
There is no C.
C means you are not in a sales role.
It may be Account management.
It may be Customer Service.
But not sales. Both are important, obviously, but they shouldn't be confused with sales.
Selling on price requires no skill
You do not need the lowest prices in order to sell.
Even if your products are commodities, how you buy them and store them and ship them to customers – how you get the necessary products to and through your customers is unique.
More importantly, YOU are unique. Your skills and experiences and insights are unique and valuable and needed.
You must believe that to be true.
Because it is.
Two Prospecting Principles
The first defines what prospecting is:
Again, prospecting is any legitimate attempt to start a business conversation to help someone eliminate their needs, fears, and pain or take advantage of opportunities for growth that could result in a verbal no.
The second details why prospect is important:
The sales activity of prospecting is the only thing that, when done daily with intentionality, will guarantee your success – provided that you never, ever stop. If you stop prospecting your failure is all but guaranteed.
These two principles are the core of your sales mindset.
Your Numbers
Done daily with intentionality
Your schedule is king
You’d never allow someone to wander by your office, plunge their hand in your pocket, remove your wallet, and peel off a few large bills for themselves.
There is a name for that: theft.
And yet, you willingly allow people to oh-so casually and consistently take money out of your pocket by stealing your time.
Your time, attention, and energy are your most valuable resources and they are non-renewable.
Use them up and they are gone.
Since prospecting is the core of sales activity driving your success, it must take priority. Prospecting gets your time, attention, and energy first.
Every random Tom, Dick, and Harriet – colleagues and clients alike – who decide to call your phone because it suits them .. they can wait. You decide where your time, attention and energy goes, not them.
And if the thought, “But I'm just too busy to prospect,” has ever wafted by, I’m going to challenge you here with this reply:
Of course you’re too busy. You allowed everyone else to decide your schedule for you.
No more.
That ends now.
It starts with goals
The planning begins with goals.
If it’s a known truth that goals written down and reviewed often are significantly more likely to be achieved (it is and they are), then WHY - FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND CAPITALISTIC – WHY ARE YOU NOT WRITING THEM DOWN AND REVIEWING THEM OFTEN!
I apologize for all the screaming.
To avoid 30,000 words on goal-setting, see our PDF on Annual Quarterly Goals.
The Annual-Quarterly Goals template is simple, but effective. It’s a 2-page document to help you identify your annual and quarterly goals. It has four writing prompts and provides space for you to write your answers.
If this goal-setting seems tedious and unnecessary, it is anything but. If your goals are not clear, you will not achieve them, unless by luck.
From pipe-dream to pipeline: Setting up your prospect list
Prospect list
Segment your prospects into three categories: Hot, In Progress, and Target
Hot Prospects are expected to close within the next 30 days with a 90% probability.
In Progress Prospects indicates you are involved in active conversations with them. Whether they have simply responded to your email or you’re currently at the negotiating table haggling over a few pennies on each bundle of Owens Corning Oakridge Estate Gray Laminated Architectural Roof Shingles (just one example), if you’re in a conversation, yet do not believe you will close the deal - win or lose within the next 30 days – they are active prospects.
Target Prospects are just that - targets you have identified. You are not yet in an active conversation.
Maybe you have identified an organization as a potential fit, but have not done any research yet and have not called them. That’s a Target Prospect.
For each Client and Prospect, input an expected value and the magic of simple algorithms will automatically compute the value of your pipeline each month.
For Target Prospects, you’ll be guessing because, by definition, you have yet to begin an active conversation, but don’t sweat it. The important thing is to have a pipeline completed each month, have it on hand, and refer to it DAILY.
As you prepare to pick up the phone and interrupt with value, don't overlook the obvious: the needs, fears, pain, and opportunities for growth (NFPOs) that your prospects surely have are identical to the ones your current clients have.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking your prospects have hyper-specific and incredibly unique and complicated problems you’ve never heard of before. Simply listen to the questions and conversations you're having with your clients now.
Your prospects’ NFPOs will either be exactly the same or generally the same.
Amateur salespeople overlook the daily interactions with clients as something altogether different than the activity of helping non-clients–prospects, that is.
Do not undervalue all that you know and do.
Listen broadly
Begin with the end in mind
Your Phone (Your Greatest Weapon)
Interrupt with value (and a smile) Turns out humans can easily detect whether people are smiling on the other end of the line or not.
If the client does not answer - leave a voicemail, enunciate your phone number twice. Remember how you say whatever you say is just as important as what you say.
Most voicemails are not listened to.
They’re converted to text within a voicemail app and read later. Look at the text of a voicemail on your own phone now. What do you notice? Right. Every umm, ahh , and y’know is included in the transcript, not only distracting your prospect, but highlighting your need for unnecessary filler words.
Practice your craft.
There's no reason not to recite a clear, concise, value-filled voicemail every single time.
Leaving exceptional voicemails is a critical skill. Your prospecting efforts will be a series of voicemails punctuated by the occasional conversation with a real human being.
Let the prospect know you’re relentless
One purchasing leader I worked with had a simple rule to filter out lazy salespeople. He never returned a call or email to any sales professional until they made three attempts.
Three.
People respect relentlessness in unknown salespeople if it is paired with thoughtfulness.
Whether you speak to your prospect directly or you leave a voicemail, let your prospect know you are relentless: you will not give up.
In this article, we explored the two fundamental principles of prospecting: defining what it is and emphasizing its crucial role in guaranteeing long-term sales success. We also highlighted the importance of intentionality, consistency, and time management in your prospecting effort
To further enhance your prospecting skills and achieve even greater success, we recommend investing in our comprehensive professional sales field manual, "Prospecting". This book delves deeper into the strategies, techniques, and mindset shifts necessary to become a top-performing sales professional.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to transform your sales game.