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BOOK REVIEW: Fanatical prospecting

Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount

SALES people constitute a significant percentage of the workforce, ranging from outbound call centre operators to new business developers. Many people whose professions require that they be actively engaged in sales do not bear the title of “salesperson”. This book on prospecting should be of interest to many.

It is a practical guide to what makes relatively ordinary people into superb salespeople. Sales begins with prospecting, a skill that must be mastered by all.

The easiest time to introduce “social selling” to a sales person is on one of their down days, when the pipeline is thin and prospects are few. Social selling is often positioned as the panacea that will drive quality prospects to you.

In reality, “contact and conversion rates from phone and e-mail dwarf conversion rates on social media,” asserts Blount. Yes, the social media can enhance and sometimes accelerate your prospecting efforts, and it can definitely heighten familiarity.

However, “it is not a replacement for focused and deliberate outbound prospecting efforts,” Blount explains. One’s largest and most lucrative prospects rarely respond to inbound-marketing or to social selling.

The only way you will achieve your numbers is to make targeted, prospecting outbound calls.  

We have long held that “interruption selling” is a relic of the past to be avoided by the savvy salesperson. In a crowded, competitive marketplace, interruption selling remains the most effective practice. Within “interruption selling” there are many prospecting methodologies, and no single formula fits all. Every geography, industry, product, and service requires a different approach.

Three laws

Salespeople needs to balance their prospecting in order to build a database with long-term opportunities, as they fill their sales pipeline with deals they can close immediately. To do this, Blount notes, we need to master the three laws that form the basis of successful prospecting.

The first is “The Universal Law of Need”. The law states that the more you need something, the less likely it is that you will get it.  Consider the times when your survival rested on a just a few accounts. With a heightened probability of failure, your desperation seeped through.  During times like these you become emotional, act illogically, and make poor decisions.

Prospects can sense your desperation, and naturally favour sales professionals who exude confidence over those who are desperate.

The second law is “The 30-Day Law”. This law states that the prospecting you do in the current 30-day period, will pay off for the next 90 days.

Skip one day of prospecting and sometime in the next 90 days you will be punished for it. Skip one week, and the consequence will be felt in your commission cheque. Skipping an entire month and your pipeline will empty and you will “wake up 90 days later, desperate, feeling like a loser, with no clue how you ended up there,” Blount warns. This particular seduction is usually preceded by a month or two of great business.

The unrelenting daily imperative for every salesperson, is to keep the pipeline full with qualified prospects
The third of the laws is “The Law of Replacement”. Violating the Law of Replacement is the reason salespeople feel like they are on a roller coaster. You must replace your prospects at a rate that matches or exceeds your closing ratio. If you have 40 prospects and your closing ratio is 1 in10, as soon as you close one prospect, you do not have 39 left, you have only 30 and you need to replace not 1, but 10.

The anatomy of a sales slumps take on a familiar form. At some point you stopped prospecting and your sales pipeline stalled. This failure leads to an erosion of your confidence and in desperation you call the same, stale prospects. You start hoping for silver bullets, and experience the Universal Law of Need.

When you are in a hole, it is advisable to stop digging; when you are in a sales slump, it is advisable to start prospecting. Worry won't change the future, nor will regret over what you have not done. You will most often require about 30 days of dedicated, daily activity to get back on track, Blount explains.

The more you prospect, the luckier you get. Will training, experience, and technique make you a better prospector? Of course, Blount believes. However, “it is far more important that you prospect consistently than that you prospect using the best techniques,” he explains.

Sales has always been governed by numbers. The sales formula for success is simple. What (quality) you put into the sales pipeline and how much (quantity) determines what you get out of the pipe. Just as elite athletes focus on their statistics, elite salespeople need to do so, too.

“To succeed in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here's what's exciting - there are lots of people!” said the legendary sales trainer, Jim Rohn. This is the fundamental principle of prospecting.

Read this book if you are in sales or run a sales team. It is full of practical techniques.

Readability       Light -+--- Serious
Insights        High --+-- Low
Practical        High +---- Low

* Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.

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