Nothing quickens the heart… and stimulates sales, better than a flurry of meetings with qualified prospects.
There is no greater torture than to stare at an empty calendar with the belief that making a call or sending yet another email is the equivalent of waterboarding yourself.
How do people turn it around? When you are working hard but sales are not happening. When the economy is tough and fewer are buying. How do you make the sales you must make?
It’s more than “techniques.”
You must lay your “butts” bare and do what works.
What works works.
Whether we like it, are comfortable with it or choose to accept it.
You must do what works without exception or watering it down. You must dedicate focused time to it.
Particularly when you are economically challenged.
Lots of people prospect successfully. The wheel has been invented and there is a process that tends to work.
But, when what has been proven to work is explained, instead of following it, start with the “but’s.” “But” in my industry, “but “my locality, “but” my customers… on and on ad nauseum.
So, with their “but’s” they rationalize why what works for the best, the leaders in their industry, those that generate high probability prospects consistently and at a reasonable cost, won’t work for them. They then do something totally at odds with top prospecting producers and wonder why they don’t get results. Nuts.
In another article you read about Craig from MI whose 5-person in-house prospecting team went from 20 to 100 appointments a week in the middle of a bad economy. He is one of many that turn it around.
Susan D. from CA called me after listening to that interview to happily report a tremendous turn around in appointments and an end to torturing herself. She said the Craig interview helped a lot.
How I asked, expecting to hear stuff about scripts, process, etc.
She said, and this is critical for you to apply, “Craig kept going back evaluating what he was doing and making constant tweaks to the behaviors of his team.”
Let me rephrase that. He paid attention to the details, tracked stuff, made changes and went from 20 to 100 meetings a week in the middle of a bad economy.
I hear a lot of result stories like that.
Two lessons. This is where you lay your “butts” bare and turn around your prospecting torture train.
- You must do what works without exception or watering it down.
Example. Last week got a call from a seminar attendee who asked that I review her scripts. The scripts were the exact opposite of what were taught. Contained 3 things I told them never to do.
Hello! If you are taught exactly what to do and choose to do the exact opposite, you are not going to win. The more you vary the harder you make it for yourself.
I see and speak to people all the time that “get congruent” with behaviors of successful appointments setters and go quickly from frustration to getting qualified meetings consistently.
- Make time and bear down.
Answer me this. Why do people have time to do what doesn’t work, things that don’t move them forward, that are even counter-productive, yet… they don’t have time to do what works?
Like Craig and Susan above those that turn it around get ruthless about carving out time to focus and implement. I’m not talking about doing more on top of what you are already doing. I’m talking about stepping up to the plate, facing reality as to all you do that is not contributing to success, and making ruthless no excuses break the furniture type change.
Stop clinging to what you are comfortable with and wish would work and ruthlessly eliminate it from your life. Break the furniture.
This stuff is not rocket science. Tons of people are doing it well and earning new accounts. They may not love it, never met a person who does…heck, I teach the stuff and don’t love doing it, but the point is that there is a way of setting appointments and generating b2b leads that works and gets you the results you need.
Recognize that people are successfully doing it. Even when times are tough.
You can too.
