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The lifeblood of sales is opportunities, and opportunities come from two places, existing clients and new prospects. While we can spend a long time debating which of the two may be more desirable, the reality is that some existing accounts don’t grow beyond a point, or may grow slowly over time. Further more the one unchangeable reality of existing accounts is that they tend to go away; attrition as a result of mergers, price or service factors, or a growing factor over the last 18 months, bankruptcy. The fact remains that unless you are that rare company or rep that can organically replace lost revenues from attrition and achieve growth from your base, you are going to have to prospect for new prospects. No fear, we can help.

Success in prospecting, or more accurately lack of success in prospect, is a result of a vicious circle of a self fulfilling prophecy. People hate the activity because they lack success, they lack success because they are not prepared, they fail to prepare because they hate the activity. As we have discussed before this leads to rejection by the approached buyers, but the same reps don’t think twice about the rejected at the proposal stage of the sale, and statistically, the rejection rate for prospectors is not that much higher for prospectors who deploy a process and are prepared. The difference, preparation and process; by the time you reach the proposal stage you spent a lot of time preparing for the moment, and following a defined process, this can’t be said for most sales rep’s prospecting.

So let’s look at three things you can do to prepare and improve you prospecting success.

Lead Coverage Strategy
+ Time
+ Process
= Outlook and success

These are not the only elements but they are fundamental, improve these and you will improve your output.

1. Lead Coverage Strategy – Leads do not equal lists, many sales people will present a list of names of companies and tell you that they have a proper call list. Some of these do not even have the name of the people by title or their phone number, just the name of the company and the main switch phone number. Leads are the raw ingredients of prospects, this does not mean that fresher is better, it means you need to ensure that you are constantly developing them. This requires a strategy to gather, nurture and grow the leads. This ensures two things. First, that you have a steady flow of quality, vetted leads to approach. Second that even the initial contact does not result in things moving forward, you have a means of continuing to evolve the lead for future contact.

I am still surprised when I hear that a rep feels that they have no leads, or when the opposite statement is made, "I have too many leads". The accurate question is do you have enough leads at any given time that are worth being and ready to be approached. The measure for this will vary from industry to industry; even companies within a sector will be impacted by the position of the company and their current market view. Whatever that combination may be, it is important that you have a way to grade your leads to ensure that they approached at the right time. This is not to be taken as the perfect time, but to make sure that it is not too soon, that they have had the right amount of passive and direct interaction (social media, blog, newsletters, event related what have you). And as always, we want to remind you that leads are recyclable, even when properly managed and prepped, first contact may not result in conversion, sometime not the third or fifth, but does not prevent them from engaging in the future. Which is why you need to have a contact strategy that includes, touching the lead (coverage), contacting the lead based on a proven model, and finally converting.

Properly planned and executed, you will have a steady stream of viable leads to pursue.

2. Time – The sad reality is few people have enough time to get all the things they want to or need to get done. So it is easy to work the day away, seem productive, and still not get things done. Couple this with the tendency of most people to do things to avoid doing things they do not like, and prospecting, especially for new clients, is something most reps would rather do without. As a result, Time Allocation becomes a crucial skill and function.

Reps need to take a proactive approach and commitment to allocating time to key activities, one of which is prospecting. How much time, is up to you to figure out, some need to spend less, some more, the easiest thing to do is work this out based on your goal, and other Key Conversion Rates such as deal size, proposals to close, prospect to proposal. (Click her for further detail).

Figuring this out is the easy part, the hard part is putting it in your calendar and sticking with it. Not be distracted by other things, fires, colleagues needing help with a stuck drawer, whatever. You need to treat this time with the same level of respect and commitment as a key client meeting. You wouldn’t check e-mail, voice mail, answer your phone or strike up a chat with a co-worker about who should win the Oscar. You should act at the time and for the amount of time you committed to. Put it in your calendar, like you would an appointment and treat it as such.

3. Process – Not big and heavy, but structured, planned out way of approaching the act of setting appointments. Knowing how you will open the call, (or e-mail); how you will engage and involve the prospect; the impact question, and of course how to deal with the inevitable “objection”, ah the rejection that most sales people will do anything to avoid.

But with planning, practice and commitment, you can develop a flow that leverages many of the skills you deploy in other parts of the sale, which will improve your results. Again, we are not talking about perfection, but consistent predictable results in the form of appointments with the right prospects. Few B2B sales people have a perfect closing ratio, but they seem to be able to rationalize and live with their usual output. For most that is somewhere between one of every three to one of every six, any way you slice it is a “rejection” rate of greater than 50%. Yet most reps do not shy away from working proposals despite the “rejection”, so if you can develop a process where you can achieve a predictable rate of conversion, rejection will still be a factor, but one under control.

These are not the only things that come into the equation, there are definitely other things that have to be mastered, but if you can commit to and master these three, you will take a huge and measurable step forward towards prospecting success.

What's in Your Pipeline?

Tibor Shanto, Principal with Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., and author voted #1 by readers for top article of 2009 by Top 10 Sales Articles. Renbor has helped dozens of organization with sales execution - - from filling their pipeline with real prospects - - to driving real revenue. You can read Tibor's blog The Pipeline at www.sellbetter.ca/blog.

For more information on helping your team sell better, write to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or call 416 671-3555. You can also follow Renbor on Twitter http://twitter.com/renbor.