If you neglect to do something for long periods of time, your effectiveness will gradually decline. It will atrophy, or waste away.
The more time you spend away from prospecting, the more your mindset atrophies. Because you aren’t picking up the phone, the first thing to wither away into nothingness is your willingness to pick up the phone and call your dream client. As your willingness slowly dissolves, you find it more and more difficult to do the work that creates opportunities.
After some time away from prospecting, your skills start to atrophy, too. You lose these skills far faster than you imagine. Every week without dialing the phone, you are little more rusty, a little bit more off your game, and a little less effective with your language.
Once the willingness and skills have declined, your confidence begins to decline. Just like muscle, it starts to shrink from lack of use. Your confidence gets weaker and weaker until it is so shriveled up that you are unrecognizable as a salesperson. If you were once a hunter, you no longer look like one now.
Prospecting is the lifeblood of a sales organization. It is one of the primary outcomes a salesperson must create. A salesperson who can’t or won’t create new opportunities isn’t a salesperson.
Sometimes, when a salesperson is successful, they believe that they shouldn’t have to prospect. They start to believe that they should only be required to create value once a lead has been fully vetted and the prospect is “ready to buy,” an incredibly poor practice.
If you stop prospecting, your prospecting muscles will atrophy. When later it becomes important for you to create opportunities, you will have lost your superpowers. You want to keep your mindset, keep your skills, and grow your confidence.
Don’t let your prospecting muscles atrophy.
