The 5 Activities of Successful Salespeople: Effective Prospecting

In the previous post, I identified the 5 areas of activities high achieving salespeople operate in: 1) prospecting, 2) cultivating, 3) proposing, 4) closing and 5) fulfilling. Of these 5, proposing and closing are the highest value activity, but the other 3 areas of activities are things the salesperson has to do well, and effectively, to be a top performer.

This blog is on effective prospecting. Prospecting is often done in collaboration with, or the support of, the marketing department. But, high achievers know that highly qualified prospects lead to more sales quicker, less work sifting through 'noise', less distraction, less stress, and higher commission cheques.

Bottom line: knowing how to prospect well is a critical trait for high achieving salespeople.

Prospecting:

Prospecting activities (in my view) fall into 1 of 3 categories: cold prospecting, event prospecting, and warm prospecting. 

Cold prospecting is when you are trying to connect with people you have never connected with before. I'll use my morning LinkedIn activities are an example of cold prospecting. I reserve 30 minutes a day for it and only reach out to folks that I have a chance of doing business with at some point. This keeps the "noise" level down to keep my focus and effectiveness up for 2, 3 and 4 later. On average, I reach out to 25 to 30 people with appropriate roles in companies or industries I am already having success in. Ten to 15 of those people typically accept my connection invitation. (There's a few things I've learned over the years on this specific activity that I may go deeper on in a following blog post, but feel free to reach out to me at paul@tpi-3.ca if this is of immediate interest to you). The key here is that I don't add much prospecting "noise" to my network. I have a "for business" attitude and purpose in all my connections, and recognize they have the same attitude and purpose in their connections too.

Warm prospecting is when you are reaching out to people you already know with the hope of finding other problems you can help them solve. Warm prospecting crosses over a bit with activity category 2, which is cultivation, but often there's connections that you already have but haven't done business with for a while that are still very valuable prospects for future business. Sure, you're marketing department may be 'dripping' them with regular emails and eblasts, but sales is still largely a people-to-people activity. When was the last time you reached out to them personally, to see how they're doing, or to find out what they're company may be up to? Sometimes people change companies, so they're no longer getting the regular marketing feed from your company. You still have the connection with them through LinkedIn (or you should have it!). When a solid connection leaves one company and goes to another, you may think you lost a champion at a current customer when in reality, you gained a potential champion at a company you haven't yet gotten into! Another way I would warm prospect is asking my connection at a plant for insights into other problems in areas or departments and introductions to their peer level colleagues that may be experiencing them - and the best time to do this is when you are in their plant for other reasons.

Event prospecting is taking the best advantage of tradeshows, conferences, and industry events you are planning to attend. Most salespeople (and marketing departments) think of this as primarily "in, or at event" activity, when in reality, high achieving salespeople understand "pre-event" and "post-event" activities are equally as important as "in-event" activity.

The default plan for many companies and salespeople at tradeshows is just to show up with lots of collateral marketing material, make lots of new connections to add to the CRM or fill up the hopper), and hope. That's not a plan, that's wishful thinking. Great salespeople know how to triage and "zero in" while in the booth, but more than that, they know how to use an upcoming event as a very valuable prospecting tool, they know how to use it to "find the gold" in the event, and they know how to not lose that valuable new connection in all the hopper noise or general adrenalin rush and buzz that often follows a big, high intensity event. (Effective tradeshow plans and habits is another topic I'll go deeper on in another blog, but if you have questions on it, reach out to me at paul@tpi-3.ca)

Bottom line: high achieving salespeople know how to prospect well. Some may think its largely a marketing responsibility, and in some companies, its a specifically segmented "dial for dollars" type of role, but in my experience, all high achieving salespeople I have worked with rely largely on their own prospecting abilities. They have refined and perfected them over time, because it comes down to this: the higher the quality of prospects they have, the more successful the salesperson will be. All 4 following activities (cultivating, proposing, closing, and even fulfilling) are far easier, with far less effort, and far better chance of success. If you prospect well, the rest is far easier.

Stay tuned. (And follow TPI-3)

The next blogs will cover the remaining 4 activities of successful, high achieving salespeople.

If you missed the first blog in this series, you can read it here: The 5 Activities of Successful Salespeople

Here's a link to the next blog in the series: The 5 Activities of Successful Salespeople: Cultivating to Close