Come to Grips with Reality
It has been said, “You cannot be delusional and successful at the same time.” For sellers, our path to delusion or success begins in the prospecting phase. It is separating genuine prospects from questionable suspects. Most have names on a list. Many of these names will never become customers. But some of us will never admit that we messed up by putting the name on our call list to begin with. It may be because we don’t know the difference. We cannot, in our minds, separate the doers from non-doers, the winners from the non-winners. We don’t have the litmus paper needed to test our hypothesis on each person on the list. We expect people to behave like we behave, and they do not and will not.
It is up to you to learn to spot the difference. Distinguish between those merely kicking tires and those who are serious businesspeople. Each will have characteristics you can spot. And we will get to that. But for now, start by being honest with yourself. Your goal should be to cut the time you spend with people who will never do business with you. If someone doesn’t like you, your company, or your boss, you are not going to fix that in the short term. That is a long-term play that has low odds. Factor that out. Leave them for a later date and a longer conversation. Focus instead on those who know and like what you do. Those are better long-term prospects.
Unfortunately, many sellers will game the system. It is a trick learned in the hallways of higher education. Back when we had to write term papers, size, and volume had stature. Substance may not have been necessary. But when it comes to your livelihood, learn to be both militant and diligent. Apply this principle to what you spend your time on. And apply it to whom you spend your time with. This is of extreme importance. Don’t go for volume. Avoid stuffing a list full of names. Most will never become customers. Weed that stuff out before you begin your outreach. If your manager says you need to make twenty calls a day, do it. But wouldn’t it be better for you if these were twenty calls to people who have a chance of doing business with you? Rather than twenty dead-end leads put on a list to make yourself feel better?
I get it. You are in sales. The landscape can be competitive. When you see others making hundreds of phone calls and being successful, you want that, too. But you can’t use someone else’s metrics to manage your sales franchise. You need to stick to your numbers and your output. Names on a list going nowhere are time wasters for you. Yet, referral leads, organic conversations, and natural outreach prospects are a much better use of your time. When I train sellers in prospecting, I encourage them to have many lead sources. Some will work better than others. Some personality types are great at referral conversations, others with natural outreach. Some play a lot of golf, some do not. Find what works for you, and what works best. Check your lead sources on the regular.
The reality is your pipeline will be the key to a healthy sales franchise. To keep your pipeline clean, you need to clean up your prospect list. Don’t let time wasters and time suckers hang around. It doesn’t mean you are rude. It means you are a serious person who wants to do serious business. But we will keep bad prospects around for a variety of reasons, most of them dumb. For the most part, these bad prospects are easy to talk to. They provide a service for us. They make us feel good about ourselves. But they never become customers, and they have no intention of becoming customers. It is our job to get them off the list, through whatever means necessary.
Instead of hanging on to these barnacles, move them out and leave them off. Decide, and right now, that you are going to be diligent and militant about your prospect list. Decide you want a clean, fluid, flowing pipeline of deals. You have the control. And it starts with cutting out the dead weight. Replace these non-players with real buyers. Test your list often. Make sure it is filled with the real kinds of customers you want. Not with names of people with no intention of doing business with you. Make it your goal to be as efficient as possible. Spend more time with fewer prospects. I am sure there are some managers who will argue with me about this. That is fine. That is their right.
Spending more time with fewer prospects would mean a healthy business. Remember we have three variables in our world. There is the number of customers doing business with us. Then there is the amount they invest with us each month. Finally, it is the number of months they use us. We have the most control over the middle variable. That is what they spend with us each month. Trust me. Spend more time growing the average order. Then you can spend less time with the non-prospects and time wasters. We can be more selective about the people we spend our time with. But we can only do that after we have reached a position where we have leverage. We don’t always start out that way.
Let me ask you, which is better: 10 customers spending $1000 or 5 customers spending $2000? I will maintain the latter is better as those people are more serious in their commitment. You are an important product in their mind. You are providing a valuable service they are willing to pay for and at a higher level. The money is the same. But the time freed up by having fewer people spending more allows you freedom. You have both freedom and flexibility to prospect for better customers, going forward. The same can be said for our prospect lists. If you have a prospect list of 120 people, that is way more than any human being can handle. The maximum point of capacity for most people is about 75. And that number includes active customers. But I would like to see that whittled down to 50. If you have 30 active customers and 20 real prospects, you will be busy. As long as you have an active list spending at the proper level to achieve success.
Another habit we need to acknowledge and discard is nesting. Putting people on a list and keeping them there. We sit on them like a chicken with an egg. As if, like magic, they will hatch into customers at some point. Success and delusion are polar opposites. Sitting on accounts accomplishes nothing. Get busy moving and removing the dead weight. Move the people who are most likely to become customers to the top of the list. If you have 30 prospects and 10 of them are not a good fit for you, move them off. Get rid of them. Trade them to another seller and recapture your time. Don’t leave these names on a list because one day they might become something. Make the hard choices.
As a seller, you should be trying to weed out the suspects from the prospects. It is much more efficient to spend your day with two hot prospects rather than twenty dead-end leads. To make your day more efficient, think about how you are spending your time. That is the most valuable resource we have. And people who waste your time are a primary obstacle to reaching your goal. You need to get better at identifying the players and the non-players. Improve your ability to separate the tire kickers from the serious businesspeople. There are some tests you can use to help yourself.
The first test is to determine if you have the right people. Most of us fail to identify the right players, early on. We spend so much time looking for a warm body to speak with that anybody will do. Regardless of whether this is the right person. The rule is if you are not talking to a decision-maker, you won’t get a decision. As my grandfather told me, “Never take no from someone who is unauthorized to say yes.” To me, ask process questions to determine hierarchy. My question might go like this. “When presented with a specific business opportunity, how will your company decide to move forward? Describe that process for me. How have you made these decisions, recently?” That question reveals the players. It lets me know if I am talking to a person or THE PERSON. Our problem is we don’t reach high enough up in the food chain. We ask for the person in charge of marketing or advertising. We don’t ask for the person in charge of lead generation. We don't ask for the person in charge of increasing the average customer order. We don't ask for the person in charge of keeping the lead funnel full.
Litmus test number two will involve their financial ability. There is an old saying that goes like this, “You can’t get blood from a rock.” If they don’t have any money, you are not getting any. So, ask yourself, “Do they have the financial ability to buy?” Then ask them. You can ask them, “When making this kind of decision what is the criteria you consider?” You may not get an honest answer. Probe deeper. Ask about cash flow. Look at overhead. Understand the customer operation enough to know the average order size. Determine the gross margin profit. This will help you know beyond the shadow of a doubt if they have the financial means to support your solution. If they don’t move on. The worst thing you can do is to try to cram their measly, anemic number into a solution that costs twice as much. That is doomed for failure. And I suspect you already know why.
Ask yourself if they have a business problem you can solve. I can’t solve problems like poor customer experience or improper product selection. But lack of foot traffic or high-quality leads are problems I would like to have the opportunity to work on. Talk about their business issues, as you see them. If someone is self-aware enough to admit a problem and look for a plausible solution, it is likely someone you can help. If they can see the vision of the future and have the willingness to take the first step, move forward. Otherwise, move on to someone who does. Don’t hold on too long to someone who can’t see the forest through the trees.
Does this person have a timeline for implementation? Nothing is more infuriating than spending an inordinate amount of time with someone who will never make a decision. If they won’t commit to this, you may have a problem. A vague answer means this person is not serious about solving the problem. If they were serious, finding a solution would be an urgent request. If it is six months to a year, you can spend less time with them today and ramp that up as the deadline approaches. If they have no timeline for execution, it may be time to move on.
Someone who is serious about solving a problem will tell you some inside information. If you learn something about their business you cannot read on their website, they may be open to solving the problem. Or at least to discuss it. If you can learn something from them you cannot learn by visiting their business, they may be more inclined to solve the problem. And solve it with you. Probe for this information. This will be something that only comes from a conversation with your customer. Something about their business that furthers the sales process. They won’t share this with you unless they have confidence in your ability to help them.
Ask about your competitors. It puts this conversation on the table. It displays real confidence. It will tell you if the competitor has already established the value of the product. You might have some work to do undoing their perception of value. Also, you may be a stalking horse and don’t know it. To determine if you are playing a level game, ask the prospect to do something extra for you. For me, this might sound like this. “I am going to give you something for your consideration. If you would, provide your comments/feedback so we can move forward.” If I am a real player for them, they will happily comply. If I meet resistance the former may be true.
Keeping a clean pipeline starts with a clean prospect list. Get rid of the dead weight we all carry around. If someone does not fit your criteria and ideal customer profile, cut them loose. Look at the total number of businesses in your area. Most media outlets have less than five percent of the total business community as customers. Keep searching for the right customers for your business. Do this instead of taking any customer for your business. True business profit comes from repeat business, repeatedly. Getting the best customers on your prospect list is the first step in the journey to repeat business. And you will only get there if you come to grips with reality.
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