Prospecting Choices: Where will you choose to be tomorrow?

In sales it sometimes seems as if you are forced into a series of activities that don't help you accomplish your goals. Customer service, proposal preparation, you may feel as if you are trapped into a certain mode of conduct.

I once believed that sales was sort of a narrow vocation, especially if you have a small variety of products or services to offer. But now I am convinced that sales offers more options than any other job. It is all based on choices.

Choices are what got you to where you are today and the choices you are making today will get you to where you will be tomorrow. One of the problems faced by sales professionals is that you have the option of making far too many choices.

You make so many choices everyday that you often don't even consider them choices anymore, they are simply habits. Your daily routine each morning, your route to and from work, eating, exercise ( or lack of it), etc.

Good or bad, you tend to follow a lot of habits everyday.

When it comes to Prospecting and making Cold Calls, you often choose to avoid making them. This is a bad habit, for obvious reasons. Yet I work with sales people all the time who make this choice, and know it.

Think how your life would be different if you had the habit of Prospecting on a regular basis every day. How would your sales life improve? With a continuous flow of prospects, would you have reduced stress?

Become a student of your self - learn how you work most effectively. Determine how you can add Prospecting to your daily activities. For example, I work best by segmenting my work. If I am telemarketing, I will make a series of calls for perhaps 30 minutes, then go onto some other activity.

I recently heard a speaker say, "discipline is not ability, it is accomplishment."

We have a small business. I am 100% of the sales force. We offer training programs, products, and services. There are many times that I can very easily justify not Prospecting for days and even weeks at a time. I have far too many things to do.

But when my work load slows a little, I am in the same situation I warn others about. Slowing business and few prospects. It becomes a really stupid cycle. Prospect like mad, get a lot of activity started, stop Prospecting and do the work. Then the work trails off and you have to Prospect like crazy again. You are simply going from peak to valley to peak and valley again.

Add to that the need for "crisis prospecting" because of cash flow problems and you have the additional burden of trying to sell too soon in your relationship with those prospects. Crisis Prospecting occurs when you haven't prospected sufficiently and you are quickly running out of business.

All this can be prevented by simply choosing to set up a system of Prospecting on a regular basis. That is several times a week for me. It may be more or less often for you, depending on your product lines and markets. Regardless, a regular system of Prospecting and making Cold calls is one choice that will make life a lot more fun.

This also requires you to have an adequate number of leads. You can't call on people if you don't know who they are. Therefore get a good source of leads. I use the Ohio Industrial Directory by Harris Publishing. Add to that the Fortune 1,000 company listing, and observation when in the field and you should have a good backlog of companies to call on.

I put each lead on an index card with the phone number and place it in an index card box behind the date card that will remind you to call them. If you are in the field making calls, you can take you card box with you and make cold calls at companies as you see them. This is a great way to get your batteries "re-charged." It also creates a lot of new activity, so be careful not to prospect too much. You still have other responsibilities.

If you chose to make all of those prospecting calls 6 months ago, where would you be now? If you choose to start making those prospecting calls on a regular basis now, where will you be in 6 months?

So you see, it all boils down to a simple matter of choice. You are where you are today because of the choices you made in the past. Where will you choose to be tomorrow?

Sell Well and Often

Bill Truax Bill@BlitzCall.com 800-253-1214

© Copyright 2006 WJ Truax

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