My previous post contained an article by Paul S. Goldner, "The Ten Commandments of Prospecting." I will address each of Paul's "commandments" and provide my two cents on each item.
Commandment I: Make an Appointment with Yourself for One Hour Each Day to Prospect
Although this is one of the most difficult points made by Paul, it is critical to allocate time for prospecting. If you are in a high transaction environment, this may not be realistic. However, you should try to plan prospecting into your calendar each week starting the prior week when you are scheduling appointments. I like to create Outlook Appointments in my calendar which specify the date/time that I will either email or call prospects. Before prospecting, you should always take the time to properly define your target market. If you do this, you will only call the best prospects in the market. If you only call the best prospects in the market, every call will be a quality call since we will only call those prospects who are most likely to buy large quantities of our product or service. Make as many calls as possible during the hour. Since every call is a quality call, more is always preferred to less.
Commandment II: Make as Many Calls as Possible
I take a different view on prospecting when it comes to quantity vs. quality. If you are in enterprise sales, quality is much more important than quantity. Think about it, would you rather prospect 100 random people inside target organizations or have a slightly higher response rate with less targets at the exec level. I fall on the side of spending more time researching each prospect to increase the odds of a meeting with the exec sponsor of my target accounts.
Commandment III: Make Your Calls Brief
Yes, yes, and yes. In most cases, my follow-up call is requesting a time to have a call. Since you are typically reaching the admin if you are calling on executives, it doesn't make sense to sell to them. Even if you do reach the exec, make sure to first propose a call time, and they will tell you if they have time now...obviously, ask them if they have time now before assuming that they do not.
Commandment IV: Be Prepared with a List of Names Before You Call
To take it one step further, I would suggest always having several lists of names at your finger tips. Whenever I run across a news article or publication with a list of prospects, I email it to myself with a specific subject line so that I can quickly reference it later for prospecting. In addition, I would imagine that you have access to Hoovers, ID Exec, or your CRM database with leads. Make sure to have a saved report with names ready for calling at all times!
Commandment V: Work Without Interruption
This goes back to scheduling prospecting time on your calendar and marking it as busy/unavailable.
Commandment VI: Consider Prospecting During Off-Peak Hours When Conventional Prospecting Times Don't Work
I generally hear from most executives that they answer their own phone from 7am - 8am. In many cases this is true, but I am not always in the prospecting frame of mind at 7am. If you are, great, you'll be more successful calling before 8am. However, I get in my prospecting zone at 5pm on the dot. I find that a lot of the email traffic and inbound calls slow at 5pm, and I also find many exec's to again answer their own phone at that time. So, this is the perfect time for me to get in calls/emails/direct mail work.
Commandment VII: Vary Your Call Times
Great advice, but it is very difficult for me to prospect in the middle of the day due to other work. However, I do typically make 5 - 10 follow-ups during the day for higher probability leads from prospecting that get added to my CRM system as tasks for follow-up. I actually do not view this as prospecting once I promote them to an actual lead in my SugarCRM application.
Commandment VIII: Be Organized
With so many possibilities out there, you must use a CRM tool. If you are an independent sales person, you are probably not reading this blog on enterprise sales. However, if you are, look into open source solutions from SugarCRM and others as one user can do a lot for very little in cost. If you are an enterprise sales exec, you must have a CRM system so I am not going to suggest one here. However, I can't tell you how many software sales reps I see who fail to use the technology they sell to make them more effective. Trust me, it may take a few extra minutes the first week, but the benefits of the process and automation long term will help you exceed your numbers.
Commandment IX: See the End Before You Begin
Same point as one of the first few points. I agree. Your one goal in prospecting is to either schedule a call or get a face to face meeting. Full stop. Nothing else. Your fallback position is a referral to someone in the organization that owns this area. Period.
Commandment X: Don't Stop
"Persistence is one of the key virtues in selling success. I have often read that most sales are made after the fifth call and most sales people quit after the first." -- > I actually find that it takes 3 calls or 4 emails to get a response. After that, they are probably not interested. However, to take it a step further than Paul, I have found that I often hear back 30 - 60 days after prospecting. So, when planning your campaigns, realize that your efforts today are building leads for next quarter in most cases. Don't get frustrated and quit as you will be hurting yourself in the long term. Be patient, stick with it for 3 months, and then report back with your comments. For ideas on what to do when prospecting, read my past blog on "Selling to VITO".
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