You have to do it: You have to create opportunities. If you are in sales, you are responsible for creating new opportunities, and that requires prospecting. There is no way around it.
You have to do more of it than you think necessary: If there is a challenge in sales right now, there is none greater than creating enough opportunities. A little prospecting generally doesn’t work. More is better. More than that is what’s required.
Consistency is King: Consistent prospecting produces better results than cramming. Daily is better than weekly. Daily is better than three call blocks throughout the week. Daily is better than any other strategy you might believe serves you.
Cold calling is a Ferrari: If you want speed to results, you use the phone as your primary medium for prospecting. If you are overwhelmed with opportunities and independently wealthy, you might choose another medium.
Email isn’t really prospecting: If no one can hear you ask for a meeting, and if there is no one there for you to whom you make your case for time, then you aren’t really prospecting. Email is for nurturing relationships.
Speaking of nurturing: If you aren’t nurturing your dream clients over time, then you cannot expect to be known for the value you create when you finally have the opportunity to ask for meeting.
The failure to prospect hurts later, not now: You can go days without prospecting. Weeks, even. You might be able to go months without creating a single opportunity. Then, two quarters from now, you have an empty pipeline, and there is no way to build one fast enough.
Your prospecting is not my prospecting: Some people are so effective as to be able to create more than enough opportunities quickly and easily. Others can spend days working targets and produce nothing. What works for you is good if you reach your goals. What is wrong for you might be right for someone else.
Social selling is an above the funnel activity, not prospecting: Nurturing relationships is important. So is establishing yourself as someone with ideas and insights. But if you are not asking for a meeting, it isn’t prospecting.
No one can do your prospecting for you: Not your SDR. Not your marketing department. Not the content creators that work in marketing. Not the event planner that gives you the attendee list of the conference you are attending.
Opening is the new closing: No opportunity is ever closed without first being created. No opportunity is captured before it is created. The top of the funnel is where the action is. The bottom of the funnel is easier.
There is no right time to prospect: Mondays are fine. So are Tuesdays. Thursday aren’t magic. Neither is Friday late, or Saturday morning. The best time to prospect is always now.
If you want to be a rain maker, make it rain. Order takers are going to quickly find themselves disintermediated.
