Reasons to Increase Your Phone Prospecting Activity

In some cases, merely increasing a given activity doesn’t really help you increase your sales effectiveness. But when you’re in a slump, increasing your prospecting—especially picking up the phone to schedule meetings—is the best prescription. Here are eleven reasons to reach out and touch someone.

You Do Too Little Prospecting: The first reason you should increase your activity is that you are not doing enough prospecting work, as evidenced by the less than stellar results you produce. Improving your sales outcomes starts with acquiring more meetings. Without those meetings, you can not—and will not—create the opportunities you need to reach your goals.

The Variability of Connecting: No matter how effective you are, you can’t be certain that anyone of your dream clients or prospects is going to take your call. The likelihood of making those connections increases when you make more calls.

Persistence Pays: The effort you put into connecting with your contacts proves that you are sincerely interested in helping them get better results. Your contacts are trained to ignore salespeople, whether it means refusing their phone calls or deleting their emails. Because most salespeople give up after a single call, earning the second no by trying again separates you from the pretenders.

The Power of Voicemail: Voicemail allows you to prove that you are human, especially if you sound pleasant, confident, and smart. Leaving a valuable and customized message will differentiate you from your competitors, many of whom are not actually sending the emails their prospective clients receive (and immediately delete).

More Meetings: Your sales effectiveness is most valuable when you’re sitting across from a prospective client or client. All other things being equal, more activity leads to more meetings. If all the white space in your calendar is blinding you, you have two options: switch Outlook to dark mode or fill your calendar with meetings. Hint: dark mode won’t lead to greater success.

Pulling Results Forward in Time: The more activity you prioritize, the sooner you will create outcomes—sometimes bearing fruit weeks or even months ahead of schedule. An opportunity you create today is better than one you create three months from now. If the only reason for far-off opportunities is that you make too few calls, you can fix the problem by picking up the phone.

Goal Attainment: The more you will yourself to do more prospecting work, the more opportunities you create. An abundance of deals allows you to lose some portion of them while still reaching your goals. A pipeline of opportunities is the only insurance you have in sales, and you have to buy it by making your phone calls.

Improves Your Competency: The more calls you make, the more you’ll improve. When you make the same call, have the same conversation, trade the same value, and resolve the same concerns over and over, you get better at the conversation. The first call you make each day is the hardest, and it feels like the phone weighs 800 pounds. The second call is much easier, and by the eleventh call, you will find your groove. Repeat this daily, and you will conquer your resistance and increase your competence.

Demonstrates Your Confidence and Conviction: If you want to serve your client’s decision-makers and decision-shapers, you can’t be afraid of talking to them. The phone allows you to confidently ask for a meeting, demonstrating your conviction that your contact will derive value from giving you their time. Email is the tool of the timid.

Phone Calls are Synchronous: Prospecting by email is problematic at best. The asynchronous nature of written communication isn’t good for asking for meetings, especially as it prevents you from effectively resolving your prospective client’s concerns or verbally asking for the next meeting. When you ask for a meeting, both you and your client should be present, something the telephone enables and other mediums prevent.

Shortens Your Prospecting Sequence: Your prospecting sequence should start with four weeks of phone calls and voicemails before you move on to other mediums and touches. Your ability to acquire a meeting prevents you from having to spend days or weeks or months chasing your prospective client on LinkedIn or email, shortening the time it takes you to get a meeting and helping you move through your sequence more efficiently.