To Prospect or Not to Prospect?
Well….Jeffrey is at it again. By “Jeffrey,” I mean Jeffrey Gitomer. Now, I like Jeffrey Gitomer. I think that Jeffrey, at one time, was the dean of sales trainers in this country. Now? Well….let’s just say I’m disappointed in him lately. I feel that it’s vital, as a trainer, speaker, and writer, to be in touch with the challenges and opportunities that my readers and attendees are facing. I’m not sure that all of my counterparts feel the same way.
My specific disagreement with Jeffrey comes in terms of prospecting. Jeffrey has changed his stance on prospecting; his recent column in a local magazine here says that “Prospecting is a waste of time. You’ll fail on 98 out of 100 cold calls that you make.” Well…he’s probably pretty close, in terms of the numerical ratios. And that is precisely why you should prospect. Let’s talk about that…and about why sales trainers tell salespeople they don’t have to prospect.
Looking at Jeffrey’s numbers, he’s probably pretty close. Let’s say that you sit down to make prospecting calls. You’ve got a good call list (no ‘person who’ calls), and you’re going to make calls in sequence. You’ll commit to making 100 dials.
In typical B2B selling, you’ll talk to someone on about one out of every four calls. By “talk to someone,” I mean that you will talk to a potential decision maker on every fourth call, roughly. So you’ve gained the opportunity to talk to about 25 people who might be able to buy from you.
If you’re doing your calling well, communicating good value, and establishing interest, you’ll win an appointment on one out of every 3-4 calls. Let’s call it four to be pessimistic, and we’ll round. So out of 25 conversations, you’ll have six initial appointments with decision makers.
Once you have that appointment, your chances of generating a viable proposal are about one in two. That’s three viable proposals (a viable proposal is a proposal that has a strong likelihood of turning into a sale).
Your close ratio on a viable proposal should be anywhere between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3. So, you’ll make 1-2 sales on that group of three proposals.
So, on your 100 calls, the ratios indicate that you’ll make 1-2 sales. There’s Jeffrey’s “fail 98 times out of 100” statement validated. But here’s the kicker:
A competent salesperson, calling in the proper fashion, can do 15-20 dials per hour. So those 100 calls will take you anywhere between 5 and 6-1/2 hours to complete. What other activity do you know of, performed competently, will predictably and reliably generate a sales funnel to produce 1-2 sales in that amount of time? Me neither.
Don’t get me wrong; the things that Jeffrey suggests as funnel-fillers are all good ones. Networking, referrals, writing articles, building a reputation – those are excellent ideas, and they’re all part of an integrated prospecting strategy. But they are neither controllable nor predictable. You can be the greatest networker in the world, and still go weeks and even months without referral business. I’ve seen numerous salespeople fail while trying to network their way to success.
And also to be fair, he’s far from the only trainer telling salespeople not to prospect. But if prospecting is so successful, why tell customers not to do it? The reason, in my opinion, is simple. There is no easier sell than telling salespeople that they don’t have to prospect anymore. Salespeople typically dislike prospecting, so if you tell them they don’t have to, they love you. But that’s doing a disservice to readers, in my opinion.
Recently I’ve had consultations with two entrepreneurs who were resistant to prospecting because they were ‘too busy.’ In each case, I was able to drill down on what made them ‘busy.’ Based on the information they gave me, their actual productive time (the time that they were working on projects) was less than 8 hours per week. My advice to them? Discipline yourself to do what you need to do – at least until you can afford to pay someone else to do it.
It’s called “discipline” because it’s not the favorite thing of most people; if it were, it would just be called “the stuff you like to do anyway.” But, like any discipline, at the root of it is a behavior that produces positive change.
