Whether you are a sales professional, business owner or sales manager; prospecting must be a priority and your day must revolve around it.
Question: What is the number one reason why businesses fail? Answer: lack of sales.
Question: What is the most effective way to generate new prospects? Answer: cold calling.
Question: What is your number one competitor? Answer: the status quo. That’s right- whatever your prospect is currently doing or using- not necessarily the market dominator.
Assuming this all to be true (it is), here’s why prospecting has to be a non-negotiable hill to die on:
1- It is the most effective way to grow your business.
Prospecting gives you the most control for consistent growth. Your dedication and commitment will determine your outcome. In other words, the more dials/door knocks you make the more people you reach or talk to. The more reaches – the more presentation appointments you set. The more presentations you deliver the more sales you close. You control your destiny and income level and your discipline and focus in daily prospecting will set your level.
2- It eliminates/reduces peaks and valleys.
Most will prospect out of necessity when the pipeline is low and there are no pending sales. So the hungry and desperate sales rep starts to prospect and guess what- it works! Pretty soon the pipeline is filling again. The problem for most though –is they nurture the pipeline to closing without consistently prospecting daily and find themselves unemployed again when the current pending transactions close. Committing to consistent daily prospecting ensures consistent growth and fills in the valleys. Every day you need to work on 3-6-12 months from now so 3-6-12 months from now you don’t have to go looking for “now” money.
3- It is your #1 business growth discipline.
Prospecting gives you the greatest ROI vs time invested of any discipline you can do. Stephen Covey in his book “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” puts prospecting along with business development in the Important Non Urgent Quadrant of the day. This is the part of our day that has the greatest leverage to growth yet-the area that we tend to starve or minimally spend time doing.
Don’t let a lack of sales cause your business to fail. Take control and take your business where you want and know it should become. Contact us if you are having challenges implementing this into your day.