Fanatical Prospecting

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What Makes People Superstars

Top sales professionals spend as much as 80 percent of their time on prospecting and qualifying activities for one important reason: They want to get up to the plate often and put together a consistent string of singles, doubles, triples, and a few home runs.

What Are The Mindsets Needed to be Successful in Sales

In sales, easy is the mother of mediocrity, and in your life, mediocrity is like a broke uncle. Once he moves into your house, it is nearly impossible to get him to leave.

There is no easy button in sales.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

What Does Fanatical Mean

The Truth about Prospecting

The Dynamics of Prospecting

The 30-Day Rule states that the prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days. It is a simple, yet powerful universal rule that governs sales and you ignore it at your peril. When you internalize this rule, it will drive you to never put prospecting aside for another day.

Miss a day of prospecting and it will tend to bite you sometime in the next 90 days. Miss a week and you will feel it in your commission check. Miss the entire month and you will tank your pipeline, fall into a slump, and wake up 90 days later desperate, feeling like a loser, with no clue how you ended up there.

Law of Replacement teaches is that you must constantly be pushing new opportunities into your pipeline so that you're replacing the opportunities that will naturally fall out. And, you must do so at a rate that matches or exceeds your closing ratio. This is where a fanatical prospecting mindset really begins to pay off.

There is no sugarcoating it. Prospecting sucks. This is why so many salespeople don't do it and instead spend their time and energy seeking silver bullets, secret formulas, and shortcuts, or ignore prospecting all together until it is too late.

Facts. It sucks. You gotta do it. No silver bullets. No hacks. - January 08, 2024 @ 4:56 PM

Developing a fanatical prospecting mindset starts with coming to grips with the fact that prospecting is hard, grueling, rejection-dense work.

Habit of Superstars

Do important nonsales activities before or after the Golden Hours. There will always be nonselling activities that you must do to be successful in your job.

Horstman's Corollary - Horstman's Corollary is the converse. It describes how work contracts to fit into the time allowed.

When you get disciplined at blocking your time and concentrating your power, you see a massive and profound impact on your productivity. You become incredibly efficient when you block your day into short chunks of time for specific activities. You get more accomplished in a shorter time with far better results.

We minimize the downtime between calls by having our targeted call lists prepared and researched in advance (Platinum Hour work). We take notes during the block and wait until after the block concludes to log our calls and update the CRM—time that is blocked specifically for CRM activity. We also schedule blocks for e-mail and social prospecting.

However, Power Hours work brilliantly for two reasons: Our work contracts to fit the time allotted, so we get more done in less time. Anybody can stay focused for an hour.

Prospecting blocks should be scheduled or “blocked” on your calendar like any other commitment. They are appointments with yourself. The key to making prospecting blocks work is to treat them as sacred—in the same manner you view a set meeting with a customer, prospect, your boss, or an important event with your family.

When it comes to time blocking, you've got to stick to your guns. Let nothing or no one—not even yourself—interfere with or steal that time. Many of the sales professionals who go through our courses hang signs on their doors to warn others to leave them alone while they are on their phone blocks.

What makes prospecting blocks so productive is the concentration of all of your power on a single focus.

Instead of logging the result of each call into their CRM at the time of the call, they created a list in advance and made their notes on the list. They blocked 30 minutes after the call block to log everything in.

Mobile devices were turned off and placed into drawers. E-mail was turned off.

You cannot be efficient when you are constantly being distracted. Besides the distraction itself, it takes time to remember where you left off before you were distracted. This is why time blocking and concentrating your power inside those prospecting blocks will make you so much more productive. Placing your attention on one thing at a time is the key.

Top-earning sales pros set aside time early each morning or late each afternoon to attack important nonselling activities before the demands of the sales day kick in or after they've been addressed. They use the Platinum Hours for: Building prospecting lists Research Precall planning Developing proposals and presentations Creating contracts and getting approval Social selling activities E-mail prospecting Prospect research and call objective planning Planning and organization Administration and reports Responding to e-mail Calendar management CRM management The objective of the Platinum Hours is to set up your sales day so that all of your focus can be spent on high-value selling activities.

Effective time management is about the choices you make. The bottom line is you've got roughly eight Golden Hours each day to sell and make a living, and you have a choice. You can either dawdle those hours away doing things that don't make you money, whining that “they” give you too much paperwork, there's too much reporting, admin, traffic, bad prospects, or whatever lame excuse you are using that day to justify that fact that you are wasting it. Or, you can plan effectively, block your time, and stick to your guns when others try to corrupt, interrupt, or usurp your time for their use.

Put every detail about every account and every interaction with every account and contact in your CRM. Make good, clear notes. Never procrastinate. Do not take shortcuts. Develop the discipline to do it right the first time and it will pay off for you over time.

Things that hold you back from being a superstar

Call reluctance is a common label that gets slapped on salespeople who fail to prospect. The term conjures up the image of a salesperson staring at the phone or at their prospect's front door—knees shaking, palms sweating, drenched in anxiety, unwilling to take the next step.

you must develop the self-discipline to do a little bit of prospecting each day. You can't wait until the end of the year or even the end of the month to prospect. You have to prospect every day.

“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.”

When I'm working with salespeople who are being held back by all or one of the 3Ps, I get them focused on making just one call. Then the next. Then the next. One call at a time. Sometimes I get a list and sit next to them and dial too. When they see that I'm not getting blown out of the water by prospects, it gets easier for them to let go and take action.

Most of the problem with perfectionism is self-talk. The voice inside your head telling you that when you get all of your little ducks in a perfect row, prospects will be putty in your hands. This self-talk manifests itself in behaviors that tend to have you working hard getting everything ready and perfect, but not actually doing anything.

Superstars are good at selling. They've got the talent and the skills. They're competitive and have the drive to perform. They understand how to manage the sales process, ask great questions, deliver winning presentations, and close the deal. They have exceptional people savvy, high emotional intelligence, and a winning mindset.

Superstars are relentless, unstoppable prospectors. They are obsessive about keeping their pipeline full of qualified prospects. They prospect anywhere and anytime—constantly turning over rocks looking for their next opportunity. They prospect day and night—unstoppable and always on. Fanatical!

My favorite definition of the word fanatical is “motivated or characterized by an extreme, uncritical enthusiasm.”1 Superstars view prospecting as a way of life. They prospect with single-minded focus, worrying little about what other people think of them. They enthusiastically dive into telephone prospecting, e-mail prospecting, cold calling, networking, asking for referrals, knocking on doors, following up on leads, attending trade shows, and striking up conversations with strangers. 
Superstar Prospectors...
They don't make excuses: “Oh, this is not a good time to call because they might be at lunch.” 
They don't complain: “Nobody is calling me back.” 
They don't whine: “The leads are bad.” 
They don't live in fear: “What if she says no?” Or “What if this is a bad time?” 
They don't procrastinate: “I don't have time right now. I'll catch up tomorrow.” 
They prospect when times are good because they know that a rainy day is right around the corner. 
They prospect when times are bad because they know that fanatical prospecting is the key to survival. 
They prospect even when they don't feel like prospecting because they are driven to keep their pipeline full.

They get up in the morning and bang the phone. During the day they knock on doors. In between meetings they prospect with e-mail and text. At night they connect with and engage prospects on social media. Before they quit for the day they make even more calls.
 
 They don't whine like babies about not having enough leads or cry at the coffee machine with all of the losers about how they don't understand why no one is buying today. They don't blame the sales manager, company, products, services, or economy. They get moving, take responsibility, and own their territory. They generate their own leads and through hard work, determination, and perseverance, their own luck.

The brutal fact is the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe, and, the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect.

In sales you are owed nothing! You've got to get your ass up and go out there and make things happen yourself.

Mindsets of Successful Prospectors

Optimistic and enthusiastic: Fanatical prospectors have a winning, optimistic mindset. They know that negative, bitter people with a victim mindset do not succeed in sales. Fanatical prospectors attack each day with enthusiasm—fired up and ready to rock. They view each day as a fresh new opportunity to achieve. Because of this, they seize the day, brush past naysayers and complainers, and dive into prospecting with unequaled drive. Even on bad days they reach deep inside and find enough stored enthusiasm to push themselves to keep going and make one more call. 
Competitive: Fanatical prospectors view prospecting through the eyes of a fierce competitor. They are hardwired to win and will do whatever it takes to stay on top. They begin each day prepared to win the battle for the attention of the most coveted prospects, and outwit and outhustle their competitors at every turn. 
Confident: Fanatical prospectors approach prospecting with confidence. They expect to win and believe they are going to win. They have developed mental toughness and the ability to manage the disruptive emotions of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. They leverage confidence and self-control to persuade prospects to give up time and resources to engage in sales conversations. 
Relentless: Fanatical prospectors have a high need for achievement. They do whatever it takes to reach their goal. They never, ever give up believing that persistence always wins. They use rejection as motivational fuel to get up and keep going with a determined belief that their next “yes” is right around the corner. 
Thirsty for knowledge: Fanatical prospectors welcome feedback and coaching. They seek out every opportunity to learn and invest in themselves by voraciously consuming books, podcasts, audiobooks, blog posts, online training, live seminars, and anything else they believe will make them better. They have an unshakable belief that everything happens for a reason and through this lens view setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow. 
Systematic and efficient: Fanatical prospectors have the ability to execute with near-robotic and systematical efficiency. They are skilled at their craft like a pro athlete. They protect the golden hours, block their time, and concentrate their power to tune out distractions and avoid disruptions. They systematically develop their prospect database to build more effective and targeted lists, and squeeze every moment from each sales day. 
Adaptive and flexible: Fanatical prospectors have acute situational awareness. Because of this, they are able to respond and adapt quickly to changing situations and circumstances. They leverage the three As in their approach to prospecting: adopt, adapt, adept. They actively search out and adopt new ideas and best practices, then adapt them as their own, and work at it until they become adept at execution. Fanatical prospectors are constantly trying new things and flexing with the world around them—whatever it takes to keep their pipeline full. They tend to be early adopters of new prospecting techniques, cutting-edge technology, and game-changing tactics.

You need to interrupt

If you want sustained success in your sales career, if you want to maximize your income, then you've got to interrupt prospects. You'll have to pick up the phone, walk in the door, send an e-mail or text message, or ping a prospect on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, or Facebook and interrupt someone who is not expecting you to contact them

The only way to start a sales conversation with these high-value prospects is to interrupt them.

Interrupting your prospect's day is a fundamental building block of robust sales pipelines. No matter your prospecting approach, if you don't interrupt relentlessly, your pipeline will be anemic.

strategically balance prospecting across the various prospecting channels to give you a competitive advantage when interrupting prospects in the crowded, competitive marketplace.

It is when pipelines are empty that salespeople find themselves face to face with the Universal Law of Need. The Universal Law of Need governs desperation. It states that the more you need something, the less likely it is that you will get it. This law comes into play in sales when lack of activity has left your pipeline depleted.

Desperation magnifies and accelerates failure and virtually guarantees that he won't close the deals he must have to survive.

Objectives of Prospecting

Set an appointment. Gather information and qualify. Close a sale. Build familiarity.

To be effective, you've got to know what you want and ask for it. To be efficient, you've got to get in as many prospecting touches as possible during each prospecting block.

Prospecting is not for building relationships, selling, or chatting up your buyer. It is for setting the appointment, qualifying, building familiarity, and when it makes sense, moving into the sales process right on the spot. You don't need brilliant scripts. You don't need complex strategies. You don't need to overcomplicate it. You have no time to waste on small talk, chitchat, or long-winded scripts (or e-mails) written by some dude in marketing who has never been within 50 feet of a prospect. You've got to get to the point, ask for what you want, and move on to the next touch.

To be absolutely clear, an appointment is a meeting that is on your calendar and your prospect's calendar; in other words, they are expecting you to show up in person or by phone, video call, or web conference at a specific time and date.

It is only an appointment when you have a firm commitment for a specific meeting time.

So here is a simple rule: It is only an appointment when it is on your calendar and your prospect's calendar and your prospect is expecting you to show up at a specific time, date, and place (physical or virtual).

Prospecting Pyramid

Top performers view their prospect database as a pyramid. 
At the bottom of the pyramid are the thousands of prospects they know little about other than a company name and perhaps some contact information. They don't know if the information about the prospect is correct (and there is a good chance that it isn't). 
Action: The goal with these prospects is to move them up the pyramid by gathering information to correct and confirm data, fill in the missing pieces, and begin the qualifying process. 
Higher up the pyramid, the information improves. There is solid contact information, including e-mail addresses. There may be information on competitors, product or service usage numbers, the size of the budget, and other demographic information. There may also be contact information for decision makers and influencers. 
Action: The goal with these prospects is to identify the buying window and all potential stakeholders. 
Moving higher up, potential buying windows have been identified. There are complete contact records for decision makers and influencers, including social profiles. 
Action: Your focus at this level is to implement nurturing campaigns to stay in front of confirmed decision makers in anticipation of an identified future buying window. 
Further up are conquest prospects. This is a highly targeted list of the best or largest opportunities in your territory. There will be a limited number: 10, 25, 50, 100. 
Action: The focus for conquest prospects includes nurturing and regular touches, stakeholder identification, buying window qualifying, monitoring for trigger events, and building familiarity. 
Closer to the top are hot inbound leads and referrals. 
Action: These prospects require immediate follow-up to qualify and/or move them into the pipeline. 
At the tip-top are highly qualified prospects who are moving into the buying window due to an immediate need, contract expiration, trigger event, or budgetary period. 
Action: These are your highest-priority prospects and should be on the top of your daily prospecting list. The goals is to move them into the pipe.

The key to leveraging the prospecting pyramid philosophy is a systematic daily focus on gathering qualifying information that identifies buying windows and stakeholders and moves prospects up the pyramid based on that information.

Being a more efficient and effective prospector begins and ends with an organized, targeted prospecting list.

A high-quality prospecting list is like a track for your prospecting train. It eliminates wasted time hunting and pecking for qualified prospects and helps you focus on a specific objective within a particular prospecting channel.

The sad fact is most salespeople are working off poorly constructed lists or, in many cases, no list at all. Some companies try to provide lists for their reps, but most don't, and the ones that do usually do it poorly.

Building effective and robust prospecting lists requires consistent effort and discipline, which is why salespeople don't do it. It's so much easier to open up the CRM and just start calling the first prospect record you find. This is a wake-up call. The quality of list you work from during each prospecting block has a more significant impact on the success of the block than any other element except your mindset.

When you build powerful lists, you get powerful results.

Use these elements in combination to structure your prospecting lists for maximum impact. 
Prospecting objective: set an appointment, gather information, close the sale, build familiarity Prospecting channel: phone, e-mail, social, text, in person, networking 
Qualification level: highest qualified at the top of the list—least qualified at the bottom of the list 
Potential: largest opportunities at the top of the list—lowest potential at the bottom of the list 
Probability: highest potential probability to achieve your objective at the top of the list—lowest probability at the bottom of the list 
Territory plan: day of week, postal code, street, geographic grid, city 
Inbound leads 
Conquest prospects 
Decision maker/stakeholder role 
Industry or market vertical 
Customers that purchase a specific type of product or service 
Seasonal customers 
Inactive customers 
Leads from a recent trade show or conference

CRMs

Here's the truth about the CRM: If you don't own it, you will never reach your true earning potential. Owning it means applying the CEO mindset we discussed earlier. It means: Being accountable for maintaining the integrity of your prospect database. Not waiting until your manager is screaming at you because you haven't updated a record in a month. Taking time to make copious notes following sales calls and logging those calls. Putting new leads in the system rather than carting around a pocket full of business cards you've collected from prospects. Rather than sitting around whining about how you don't understand the CRM, taking the time to learn it through trial and error and online learning tools.

Objection Handling

Reflexive Response

Most RBOs will come in the form of: Not interested Don't have the budget Too busy Send information Overwhelmed—too many things going on Just looking (inbound leads)

Three elements of the RBO Turnaround Framework are: Anchor. Disrupt. Ask.

When they say they're happy, instead of arguing that you can make them happier if they just give you a chance, say, “Awesome. If you're happy, you shouldn't even think about changing!” This is completely unexpected.

When they say they're busy, instead of arguing them into how you will only take a little bit of their time, say, “I figured you would be.” Agreeing with them disrupts their thought pattern. When they say, “Just send me some information,” say, “Tell me specifically what you are looking for.” This calls their bluff and forces engagement. When they say, “I'm not interested,” say, “That makes sense. Most people aren't.” Their brain isn't ready for you to agree with them.

One phrase you want to avoid is “I understand.” When you use the phrase “I understand,” you sound just like every other schmuck who uses this phrase as insincere filler so they can get back to pitching. It demonstrates zero empathy and tells your prospect that you are not listening and don't care.

You must ask confidently and assumptively for a specific commitment of time or information, without any hesitation or awkward pause, directly following your turnaround script. About half of the time when you ask they'll throw out another RBO—one that tends to be closer to the truth. You will want to be prepared to handle it and ask again. What you should never do is fight. It isn't worth it. When you get two RBOs and still can't turn your prospect around, graciously move on and come back at them another day.

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Fanatical Prospecting

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