Chapter 4— Adopt the balance in prospecting methodology

Poor people choose now, rich people choose balance. Most of the salespeople would tell one way of prospecting is always better than others, and this is just an excuse to avoid other prospecting techniques and avoid prospecting over the phone. Pipeline always reveals the truth if a salesperson has tried different prospecting techniques or just one. In sales, relying on one way of prospecting generates the least amount of resistance, and rejections at the expense of other techniques generate only mediocre results. However, balancing your prospecting based on your industry, product, company territory gives you a statistical advantage and will always lead to higher performance in the longer term.

There should always be a mixture of cold calling, sending emails, social selling, text messaging, referrals, where your time is invested in all these methods and it should be based on your unique situation. It’s also important to have a clear understanding of where you are against your goals because that may also determine the appropriate mix of prospecting channels. For example in some industries or certain products or services if you spend the majority of your time cold calling rather than professional networking you will fail. Now the key in designing your prospecting is based on what works best in your industry and with your product/service, the complexity of the customer, and also tenure in some cases.

For someone who is new to the company or new to sales, the prospecting technique for them has to be different than that of someone who has years of experience in the same company or in sales. If they try to follow the same from the highly experienced salespeople then they are in big trouble because they never know the amount of time and years the highly experienced salesperson invested to have a strong database that converts as customers and they also know exactly when they should engage with those prospects. The success of the highly experienced individuals was paid in advance with years of fanatical prospecting which needs to be understood by the salespeople who are just starting their career.

Look around you to find out what the top salespeople in your organization are doing to generate qualified prospects and then do what they do accordingly based on the current scenario with every prospect you are dealing with. Striking a balanced approach for prospecting is the most effective means of filling your sales pipeline no matter your industry product or service with few exceptions, the combination of multiple techniques and channels is the most effective path to building a winning pipeline.