Unlocking Success: Getting Back to Prospecting

A friend of mine who also works in sales met for coffee earlier in the summer, and we were talking about how he could improve his selling skills. He has been in the professional services business selling B2B for 6 years, but business has been slow lately. He told me how bad it made him feel that he wasn't getting many meetings. No one was picking up the phone when he called. Also, the few people with whom he was talking didn't want to meet up with him.

In the next breath, though, he got excited and said very proudly, "I'm a great closer. Just put me in front of a good lead, and eight out of ten times I'll leave with an order. I've known him for years, and I know him to be a good sales professional. Due to the sincerity of the conversation, I avoided my initial reaction to give him a hard time.

"Then why aren't you having your best year ever? Why aren't you complaining about making more money than you know what to do with? Why aren't you complaining about how difficult of a time you're having offloading new customers to teammembers due to how booked you are?", I asked.

He looked puzzled as he thought about my question, not knowing if I was jabbing at him or being serious. It was the kind of look that says, "If I'm this good, why am I having such a difficult time? He looked up, glancing around. "I just don't know why I'm not doing better," he said in a soft voice. "I'm sorry, but I'm just too busy to be calling more people."

And therein lies the problem. He had forgotten that selling isn't just about how well you close. To sell, you need to be a great starter. It's about making things happen. It's all about finding out what people want and need and then giving them what they need. Selling is about making things better and easier for the customer. But if you're not bringing in new customers and creating new opportunities, you can't close anything. I confirmed if and what type of CRM he's using and then asked him the seven questions below.

1. How many phone calls do you make a day with the sole purpose of setting an appointment? Not checking in, touching base, or following up on a proposal.

2. How much time do you spend each day making phone calls? Is this time scheduled or just something you do when you get around to it?

3. The leads you do get—where do they come from?

4. How many times do you try to reach someone before you decide they aren't a good option and move on?

5. Each day, how many new people do you call? People you've never tried to get in touch with?

6. How many people in your CRM do you call who you've called five, ten, or fifteen times but who have never bought anything from you? How do you feel when you call on the same people, even if they are nice, and they always say they aren't looking?

7. What is your sales goal for the year? Goals for a quarter? Goals every month? What are your weekly goals? Every day? What do you have to do every day to reach these goals?

Each time he was asked a question, his nerves grew. I could tell by the way he moved that he didn't have any plans or ways to look for and find new customers. "Why don't you try to find new customers? I did ask. "What do you do every single day?"

He said that he gets to work every day around 7:45 a.m. and spends most of the morning doing admin and quoting reports. He works on client proposals. Then he checks in with service to see if any issues have come up with implementation. He gets back to people who have left voicemails. He has lunch with his fellow employees and talks with a few other people in his office.

By the time he leaves at 5:15 pm, he's done a full day's worth of "stuff," but he never gets around to calling on new opportunities. He stays as far away from the phone as possible.

Since I began working in sales, I've always wondered why smart, talented, well-informed, and successful salespeople didn't keep growing their businesses and their income. Why did they always have trouble? Why did they always experience the proverbial rollercoaster in sales? Why was it always the best of times and the worst of times?

I've seen sales reps take off like rocket ships when they get hired. But in just a few years, their business had begun to cannibalize itself. Their rapid rise had stopped, and their sales and commissions never grew by more than two, four, or five percent a year, at best.

As time went on, their best customers moved on or retired, and the person who took their place put the old contracts out to bid or brought in a favorite supplier. This caused their business to slowly go downhill. What went wrong? Because the seller quit trying to find new customers. He stopped hunting. He stopped looking for gold.

Sales is about being a great opener, not just a great closer.

When you're in sales, you have to look for leads every day.

In sales, you have to call people every day.

Every day in sales, you have to solve problems.

He did everything he could think of to avoid picking up the phone. He sent out emails, composed the best-crafted proposals, and checked the company website for new product details. All just waiting for the ideal customer to call.

He would occasionally call people he had called before, but most of the time, they weren't there. So he would leave a voicemail saying something like, "Hi Jessica. Jake calling again, I just wanted to see if you were interested or back in the market. Call me at (888) 423-1234."

But neither Jessica nor any of the other people for whom he left voicemail called him back. This made him feel even worse. He had forgotten that a salesman's job is to find the client, which was a mistake. And in today's busy world, most of us don't have time to call back the people we do want to talk to, let alone call back someone who leaves a bad message that basically says, "Please call me back."

We went to work...

• I reframed the way he felt about making phone calls. He got back to thinking of the phone as a friend instead of a threat. I know he's motivated by his ability to help his customers, and from that, he can make a great income. I worked him backwards from his end goal (commission) to his conversion rates (or ideal rates since he didn't know them all), and then to each dial. Based on this exercise, he found that each dial (answer or not) equated to $26.75. The phone became his personal ATM machine. If he wanted it to spit out more money, he needed to improve his conversion or closing rates.

• We worked together to come up with a great "sales story" that kept the conversation going. No more five- to ten-second phone calls saying checking in, or "touching base".

   

• He began to look for new people to call and network with. We mapped out a few networking events where he could ask for recommendations. I helped him strategize on how to engage in social selling and begin building a network via social media.

   

As of last week, we were able to catch up after some of our summer travels, and within just a few months, he's turned around his results. He was happy to report that he's met more new customers this past month and a half than he could remember in the past year! He asked them interesting questions, solved problems, closed sales, and made money. More importantly, he's back to feeling confident and taking pride in what he's able to do for his customers. He had learned a very important lesson: selling isn't about making sales; it's about creating new opportunities.