PREFACE
TO THINK, DO, PROSPECT
Over the years working in prospecting, I have come to realize that prospecting is some activity that people have difficulties with. When I first heard the word prospecting, I wasn’t sure what the meaning of it was. In many companies I heard that people hate prospecting (especially cold calling or spending time on finding new clients). I heard they were afraid of calling prospects and rejection on the phone. I had an impression that people don’t like it (or even hate it) and often look for excuses. On top of that, I didn’t hear anybody giving me clear instructions on how to do it effectively. I was surprised that I have not met too many people who actually specialize in prospecting. When I started, it was difficult for me to understand what prospecting was and how to make cold calls, presentations or send offers. I found books about selling, closing deals, negotiating and persuasion. I couldn’t really find much on prospecting. This told me one thing at that time. I had to learn it from scratch.
Today I want to share my experience and I see prospecting as a process which can be defined, practiced and mastered. As I see it, power of actions and a good plan make prospecting work effectively. I know prospecting is difficult, time consuming, sometimes unexpected, but it can be planned and mastered.
I am a regular person who works in sales and marketing. I am also a father, husband and I play the guitar and piano. In my e-book I want to tell you a story of how it all started with prospecting. How I learnt it from scratch and learnt it the hard way. I want to inspire you and give some of the energy which you can use for your actions in prospecting. I want to show you some directions and share the best practices based on my experience. If you are ready to start this journey with me, I will be honored to accompany you. Now, who can join me?
— Sales managers and sales teams. Prospecting as a process is important for you if you want to keep your pipeline full of new clients and closed deals.
— Prospectors and new business representatives or new business managers. You do the hard work and initiate contact with potential clients (prospects). You open the door, qualify prospects and leads. This eventually ends up as closed deals in sales.
— Job-seekers. Prospecting as such might be important for job-seekers, as it requires talking to people and selling and presenting your value proposition.
— People who just start work careers in sales or marketing.
— Freelancers, headhunters, business owners or start-ups and more.
Prospecting means actions and it means hard work.
Stop thinking too much about how to start and how to be perfect. Start doing. Today is the best time for prospecting.
PART I: TO THINK
WHAT IS PROSPECTING?
Prospecting can be defined in many ways. In business, some people say prospecting is not selling and some of them treat prospecting as an integral element of the selling process. But let’s leave the business context for a moment. If we go back in history and recall prospectors during the gold rush, they were literally panning the sand and looking for gold. They had to put a lot of energy in this process, put their hands in the mud and at the end of the day they could have found nothing. But they knew there was gold to look for. They wanted to find it. In prospecting and selling the process looks similar. Prospecting is tiring, difficult and cold-calls can be compared to panning the sand. A lot of sand is thrown away, but finally some of these cold-calls are successful and end up in finding the gold (that is your potential prospective client).
Let me give a few words of an introduction before we get rid of the sand. In this ebook to think is to first realize where your gold might be and prepare a plan how to find it. When I imagine prospectors that time I can see people panning the sand all day long. Nowadays for me prospecting in business is a continuous and active process of searching, finding new clients and knowing how to do it. It can relate to various activities (cold calling, social selling, email marketing, newsletters, webinars, promotion and marketing). Strategies are different and prospecting can have different forms. So is prospecting or isn’t a part of selling? As I see it, selling can be a result of prospecting and it is strongly connected with it, but prospecting goes before the selling starts. I believe prospecting is any action that moves you closer to finding, reaching and finally getting new clients. Prospecting can work in various channels (traditional and digital). Prospecting can include a cold call, a follow up or a meeting with your potential clients. The first step is usually informing your prospect about your services and products and understanding if you can solve their problems. Not necessarily now. In a nutshell, prospecting is a continuous process of looking for opportunities to grow your business and offer solutions to problems prospects have every day. If you ask me, prospecting should be considered by sales managers as a fundamental part of the sales process simply because it brings new clients. When speaking of prospecting I also think about a prospect or a lead. This is when we speak of a company or group of people interested in your products or solutions. Now, what is a prospect and what is a lead?
A prospect is your potential client identified for taking further actions. For example, your company works with the logistics sector and you search for logistics companies as potential clients. You defined the company size, revenue and other criteria. Now out of 500 companies you choose 50 for further steps (e.g. cold calling).
A lead is a potential client identified in the prospecting process. For example, you called 50 companies out of which 15 agreed to talk with you. Then 3 of these said your solutions (or a product) look interesting and want to receive an offer, learn more about the pricing and so on, because you can potentially solve their problems.
Based on my experience, it is sometimes hard to distinguish who is a lead and who is not. You might hear your prospect saying “Yes, this sounds great. Please, send me an offer”. But your prospects are not really interested. Or on the other hand, they might say “No, I’m not interested”, while you might solve their problems. How to deal with it? For me, the solution is qualifying. What does it mean to qualify? It means learning where your prospects are in the buying process (you will read more about a buying process later in this ebook). The more you talk to your potential clients the more you learn from their answers. For example, your prospect may not be ready to see your offer today, but in 6 months’ time, today or never. I’ll focus more on qualifying and understanding it better a bit later. In a nutshell, in cold calling, you will hear so many “noes” that someday you will most probably stop paying attention to them. You would rather start reacting to “yeses”. You will be so focused on potential customers who are ready to say “yes” rather than “no” or “I’m not interested” that someday you will no longer care. If they say “no”, you will think “perfect”. And move to another prospect who is ready to do business with you.
Is prospecting selling
From my own point of view and speaking from experience, prospecting is not selling, because it focuses on activities different than in selling. That’s so important as prospecting activities have to be well-organized in order to become effective and bring good results. For me, prospecting is about taking any action that moves you closer to identify and to get your potential customers. Do you remember the story about prospecting (sand and gold)? Prospectors were most probably making no assumptions. They were panning the sand all day long. Prospecting in business can be talking to prospects, discovering their problems, gaining more information. Then qualifying your prospect. What does it mean to qualify again? It also means to have some criteria important both for your business and your customers. This could be understanding that your prospect has a problem you can solve. On top of that your prospect has the money to pay you for this. In other words, prospecting identifies an opportunity before the selling process begins and needs to have answers to some questions first. What does it mean in practice? I think that in prospecting rather than being perfect, it is more important to take actions. Take any action and don’t think too much. If you start cold calling, in so many cases you will hear “I am not interested. We already have a similar solution”. “That’s fine, sir. Mature companies like yours usually have great solutions implemented. The reason I’m calling now is to see when and how we can bring more value to your business” or “That’s great. We actually work with companies who have solutions like yours already implemented. What we want to do is to check if we can be of help in any area important for you now”. You can learn and listen to what prospects want to tell you, because usually they may have objections (there’s another chapter on objections in this ebook). Try asking questions. Agree and try to understand prospects’ current situation without pushing or disagreeing with them. If they are not interested, they will stay this way and no words will persuade them. However, the more you listen and the more you learn from the answers, the better prepared you will be for a next call. I have read in some sales books that it’s necessary to be prepared before making the first call (or a cold call). I personally disagree with this generalization. I used to be prepared so many times before making the first call. And even though I was, prospects surprised me so many times by asking different questions or being silent or not giving me full answers. I wasn’t prepared for that. They were rude, hung up so many times or were incompetent. There were so many calls where I felt totally dissatisfied and unmotivated to do my work. In my opinion, prospecting can be more demotivating than any other activity (cold calling is still better than panning the sand for me). However, the lesson I learnt is that you do not have to be prepared for the first call. But you need to know something about your prospect. You should prepare at least the minimum information and have an understanding of the prospects’ business (remember the definition of a prospect?). Have your prospecting tools and elevator pitch prepared (we will talk about elevator pitch later). In other words, the minimum information that is crucial for the first call and your prospecting elevator pitch. Spend a few minutes but not a few hours on the research. The preparation will not help you if the prospect says “I am not interested”. The minimum is better if your actions are effective rather than an hour of research if your pitch is bad. Prospecting is also something more complex than only looking for answers like “to be interested” or “not interested”. It is the art of understanding what is behind the “no” or “yes”. It sometimes requires not accepting the answer “no”, but showing a different perspective or talking over prospects’ priorities before you start showing your solutions. Selling process involves different actions and has its focus on not only identifying potential but also closing deals.
Why do people hate prospecting so much
Imagine waking up early in the morning at 4:30AM. Then going to work, put your hands in the sand and start prospecting for gold. Work all day long without effect. In the sun and in the rain. Imagine people around you telling you “There’s no gold here”. Imagine how prospectors might have felt that time.
I have heard from some sales representatives “I don’t like cold calling. It makes no sense”, “I’m scared”, “What will they think about it?”, “They will hang up on me” or “Cold calling? You are kidding”. There are basically many arguments people give not to do prospecting. For example, “I don’t like pushing my customers”, “You shouldn’t be calling them so many times. It’s rude!” or even “They will not buy from me anyway”, “Our product is too expensive” and many more excuses like these. Whatever explanation is given here, it is not a real answer. As I see it, it is often an excuse. Cold calling in general is very difficult for many people, but so important in prospecting. Based on my experience, people usually have stereotypes about making a cold call. Prospecting involves leaving your comfort zone every time you pick up the phone. It can be cold calling people you do not know. Asking them questions you don’t want to ask. And this is true that some prospects will react in a way that is not comfortable. They will say “no”, “I’m not interested”, “Stop calling me, I’m not interested”. This is a rejection and people do not like to be rejected. Good news is that fears and worrying about what you will hear is in the majority of cases exaggerated. This is because people in general have good intentions and often react in a positive way when you call them. So if you call them and inform them about solutions you present to the problems they may have, the minimum they usually do is listen to what you have to offer. However, if you sound too “salesy” or you want to sell whatever it takes, prospects’ reaction will usually be negative. They will be very careful and most probably they will lie to you by saying “Just send me this via email and I will get back to you once I’m interested”. Which actually means “Goodbye and never see you again”. Good news is that in many cases their reaction will be very positive or even surprising if you find out that you are calling them at the right time when they really need your products or services. Then sending this offer or a proposition makes sense but still most probably they will not answer your email as you need to be the one who will follow up (we will talk about a good follow up here). Of course, the majority of cases show that you do not call at the right time and prospects do not want to talk to you. No doubts about it. But as long as you master prospecting, you should understand better prospects’ reactions, the emotions and the time when you are calling. Maybe this is not the right time for them. Or maybe it’s about your tone of voice, an elevator pitch, value proposition or something else? Here we start looking for answers. Many people ask this question “Can I learn and master prospecting?”.
Can I learn and master prospecting
I believe that mastering prospecting is possible whenever you are ready to pay the price. Is it doable? Yes. However, a good question to ask here is who could be a good potential prospector and should anybody do prospecting? I am of the opinion that prospecting is a process and it can be learnt and mastered. There are tools and best practices for that. There is experience of people who have already mastered it. Answering the question “how to master prospecting” is crucial in any business. Without finding new customers your business will slowly die. It will not grow. Not every lead will convert into sales. That’s why actively looking for new leads and opportunities is so important. Mastering prospecting takes time and is different for every business and, in my opinion, should not be generalized or put into frames. As with many things in the world, prospecting changes and in prospecting you should observe what’s working the best in your business. What used to work a few years ago may not work today. In this ebook we will be mainly focusing on cold calling (initiation contact on the phone). Defining your potential customers’ profile, finding potential leads, looking for opportunities and mastering objections, asking good questions and calling at the right time or scheduling calls to find space defined by your prospect to call. Some people say cold calling is dead while some use it to initiate contact with their prospects. It’s good to start with small steps and learn. So get to work instead of thinking too much. And have a look at this e-book from time to time.
What is a lead in a process
We have already defined a lead. However, it is not always as clear and simple as it may sound in theory. There are cases where some leads are more or less willing to talk or there are situations where you can see prospects want to talk, but there is no genuine interest in your offer or the prospects don’t see any potential value in it. In a process, the lead can be a prospect who is at some point ready to start talking with you. Any prospect who is willing to see your offer, services or potential value it may bring can be qualified as a lead. However, leads can move in your pipeline. It can be difficult to make it clear every time we talk with a prospect to make a firm statement about the leads’ readiness to buy. Prospecting as a process may consist of different stages when working with leads. For example, making a first contact, verifying information, follow-up, checking status, scheduling a discovery call, scheduling a presentation or a meeting, qualifying and disqualifying.
For me qualifying leads in a process is important if we want to convert leads into successful sales. Without planning and thinking about prospecting as a continuous process there’s chaos in the pan. You might lose gold in the sand and start panning again.The prospecting process can be prepared and have its rhythm. Like in a good music band. If everyone in the band knows what notes and when to play them, you can hear beautiful songs. Similarly, if you know how to use your pan in prospecting. I mean, to use the phone for cold calling.
Get to work!
In my viewpoint, prospecting and selling are tightly connected and are priorities in every business. Finding and calling prospects can be difficult at any stage and especially at the beginning for people who start. Prospecting as a process starts with actions which are not usually nice things to do. For example, a cold call on a Monday morning. On many occasions people have to leave the comfort zone and start looking for excuses. For example, “Oh no, it’s Monday! Who calls prospects on Monday?”. Or it can be any other day of the week (by the way, why is Monday getting so much hate?). “Oh no, it is Friday. Nobody wants to talk before the weekend”. For many people complaining is more comfortable than taking the phone, dialing a number and talking to strangers. If you look for excuses, it can be anybody you want to blame. Your boss, your bad day, the economy, prospects who hang up. Who cares? If you decide to do nothing and wait, you will get no results at the end of the day. People are good at finding excuses (me too). But not many people are so good at getting the work done. Especially, when you feel that something is really challenging, gets you out of your comfort zone or pushes you to activities you do not really like. However, if you feel that something is challenging and difficult, go for it and get out of your comfort zone.
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