Get Clear on Your Prospecting

Are you clear on your prospecting?

You’re probably familiar with the saying “always be closing.”

Sure, not a bad idea.

But, I much prefer the saying “always be prospecting” because, let’s face it, if you have no one to sell to, it’s going to be very difficult to close.

Here’s the thing: you need to be extremely clear on your prospecting—specifically which activities are leading to what number of leads.

Prospecting presents a couple of insidious challenges for some sellers.

First, many salespeople hate doing it. They’d rather rely on old, outdated, or ineffective methods that they’re comfortable with, rather than step outside their comfort zone and try something new even if it has the potential to create massive results with their sales. This resistance related to prospecting also means they often “forget” to be consistent with it. Rather than making prospecting a daily, consistent habit, they make one big push on an unspecified frequency and then wonder why their sales are inconsistent.

Another problem related to prospecting is the lack of clarity salespeople have around it. They don’t measure their results, so they have little to no idea which of their (hopefully multiple) prospecting methods is generating the most results. Let’s say a seller has four primary prospecting avenues. Without properly measuring which of those four avenues is yielding the greatest result, they may be spending too much time involved in one lesser effective prospecting activity and too little time in a more effective one.

These “problems” though aren’t issues with prospecting. They are self-imposed limitations that salespeople induce onto themselves.

That’s why clarity is key.

Your sales team needs to not only make prospecting a consistent habit, but they need to do it in a systematic and strategic way that has the data to prove what they’re doing is effective and leads to results.