Over the past three weeks, we have talked about how appearing needy to your client can derail you sales.  Remember?  Maintain an even keel, don’t appear to be in a rush, make your messages short and concise, listen, and take notes.  Now let’s take a look at perhaps one of the most difficult phases of all sales work – Sales Prospecting.

Prospecting is the LIFE BLOOD OF SALES and often, the most dreaded and feared activity in sales.  Take a day off from prospecting and you get two days off next month, and they will not be very lucrative.

The problem with prospecting for most of us is that it just does not lie within our comfort zones.  Actually, most of us dread that wretched prospecting!  And, when we dread something, well, that’s about the best excuse there is for putting it off.  But, when you put it off for a couple of hours, those hours quickly turn into days and, before you know it, prospecting for new business has been pushed to the back burner, perhaps even off the stove entirely.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to address the problems with prospecting and give you some fresh – perhaps non-traditional – ways to address prospecting, ideas that will make that dreaded activity much easier to face … and overcome.

Let’s start with the top ten sales prospecting rules, kind of like breaking all this stuff down into a step program!  They are:

1. Prospecting – do it and do it some more.
2. Attitude is 90% of everything
3. Never let them see you coming
4. Give the prospect a reason to get back to you
5. Keep the right focus
6. Schedule prospecting time … and stick to it.
7. Prospect on a daily basis
8. Set traps for yourself
9. Use different strategies
10. Get your clients to do your prospecting for you.

Step one:  Do it and do it some more!  It is too easy to just put this crucial first step of Prospecting off.  When we really don’t want to do something or when we really would rather be doing something else, our mind set is not right.  The thing we are really doing is letting our subconscious rule our conscious behaviors.  Set a goal of making two prospecting calls today before lunch and make them.  No matter what the outcome, you can be pleased with the effort.  You have begun to overcome the fear, dread, whatever you call it, that is connected to making those prospecting calls.  And you have made the first step in a journey of self discovery and improvement that will lead you to find the gold that really lies in them thar hills!

Next blog, we’ll deal with steps two and three…but don’t wait for the blog to show up here.  Start working on making those prospecting calls right away.

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