What are your greatest challenges with regard to increasing your sales? That is the question we ask business owners, presidents and vice presidents of sales of companies at our business-development briefings. Can you guess the challenge they rate as the greatest by two-to-one over all others? You probably can: how to prospect more effectively to build the pipeline, especially when so many other tasks and activities seem to take all of our time.
It really comes down to a matter of priorities. For most companies, nothing happens until sales are closed and if there are no closed sales, there is no revenue.
No revenue, no company. Prospecting is the lifeblood of business. So how important is it to generate prospects? Once you have that in perspective, then it is a matter of discipline. People who get their priority tasks completed on a regular basis are disciplined people. They use their calendar to schedule those activities,and then they execute from the calendar.
Spend a little time on the weekend or at the beginning of each week planning your week and scheduling prospecting activities. You must make this a habit. Then execute from your schedule. This also must be made a habit. Stephen R. Covey, in his bestseller "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," says that a habit is the sum of knowledge, skill and desire.
I suggest you choose four to six prospecting activities that you can do effectively and consistently and schedule them into your calendar. These activities should be a mix of active and passive strategies. Active prospecting activities are those over which you can exert a high degree of control, such as cold calling, networking, seminars, talks and asking for referrals. Setting up strategic alliances is effective as well. Strategic alliances are key relationships with people who call on the same kinds of entities and people you do, but with non-competing and synergistic products and services. You should cultivate two to four of these alliances and really work hard at providing quality leads for each other. These are people with whom you schedule at least monthly meetings to compare and share conversations, contacts and strategies.
Passive activities tend to be those with which you have a low degree of control, but help to keep the "buzz" going while you are doing other things. Examples of passive prospecting activities include advertising, sponsoring, direct mail and newsletters.
Having a mix of four to six prospecting activities - some active, some passive - that you plan, schedule, execute and then track their effectiveness over time, will keep your pipeline at a level just below bursting.
The rest is up to you. Do you have the discipline to make it happen?
Al Simon is president of Simon Inc., a Duluth company and an authorized licensee of the Sandler Sales Institute - an international sales training and consulting organization. Contact him at info@SimonSaysSell.net or www.SimonSaysSell.net.
