Prospecting Habits
One of the most painful chores for a salesperson is prospecting.
That doesn’t have to mean hours on the phone calling, it is a combination of things including research and networking.
How you generate your prospects is up to you and it is specific to your situation but one thing that is common across the board, is that nothing works until you get into a pattern of regular prospecting - and by that I mean locked in diarised time.
The best pattern for me is from 9:00 (my starting time) to 10:00 Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu - and 4:00 Friday.
I like mornings because I can research while I have a coffee, and call before people get into the busy part of the day. Most company meetings are scheduled for 10:00am so I am getting in before they disappear.
This also says to my company executives, sales management and colleagues that generally I will be hard to get before 10:00 as this is special time for lead generation so they tend to leave me alone at that time. Works out well as I am late to the office occasionally and nobody notices.
I find it really hard to get through to people on a Friday morning but quite often late in the afternoon, after they’ve delivered on a tight deadline, or just because the week is over, I find people willing to take a call now and then.
The time you use doesn’t matter as long as it’s a time when you feel relaxed yourself and can easily get in the mood to make a few calls. What really matters is making this a regular daily event as it builds your skills, confidence and work output which is often hard to determine or manage.
Trust me on this, if you’re not doing this on a regular daily basis, you will easily see a 10% increase in your take home pay if you do.
This will also eliminate the sales “roller-coaster” effect that happens when you prospect like crazy, get lots of new leads and work on them, then when you’ve worked through the load, get back to crazy prospecting to generate the next bunch of leads - drives me crazy.
Get off the roller-coaster and onto a level sidewalk - prospecting daily, even though you have leads to chase down and close.
The two activities, prospecting and selling can co-exist, you just need to schedule it - and how do you do that? Outlook or your diary system!
Put a daily recurring diary entry in your diary that says“Harry is prospecting from 9:00 to 10:00 Please do not disturb unless it’s really urgent!”
Done. Share your calendar to make sure everyone can see your busy time.
Hope this helps - guaranteed 10% increase in net income if you adopt this technique!
Cheers,
FreeSalesCoach
http://www.freesalescoachblog.com
