What Is The Purpose Of Prospecting?
During the Gold Rush days in California, prospectors set up camp by a stream and patiently sifted through pan after pan of gravel and mud in the hopes of finding a gold nugget or two. It was hard, frustrating work, not unlike sales prospecting today. Perhaps the major difference between the gold prospector and the sales prospector is their attitude toward the process. Gold prospectors knew they’d have to go through a great deal of gravel and mud to find a nugget, while today’s salesperson seems frustrated with each call that doesn’t pan out.
Most sales people think that their job is to try and convince people to give them an appointment. They think if they can make enough appointments and talk to enough people then everything will work out fine. They also will tell you, as will most sales training professionals, that “sales is a numbers game.” See enough people and make enough presentations and you will close enough deals. That is so old school sales training. That paradigm went out in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, most companies, and sales managers still believe and teach that approach. That is why there is so much turnover and failure in the sales profession.
Think about it. If your goal in sales is to talk to x number of people and to set y number of appointments to close z number of deals, what happens when you fail to achieve that goal. You feel like a lousy, miserable failure. No matter how strong your ego you can only take so much.
So what should you do? Develop a new paradigm that prospecting is the culling out or disqualifying of suspects. The objective of prospecting is to eliminate those who have no need, no urgency, or no money for your product or service. Most sales people try to qualify when what they should be doing is trying to disqualify as many suspects as they can.
Getting salespeople in front of qualified prospects is typically the number one issue of companies. The ability of the sales force to keep the pipeline full is key to success.
Without an effective prospecting system in place, the sales pipeline is weak, creating pressure to be more aggressive in selling to poorly qualified prospects. This leads to poor sales, deteriorating margins, frustrated salespeople and concerned management.
Funny thing is when you adopt this attitude you stop wasting time, become more relaxed and start getting more “Yeses”. It really is a paradox.
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