Is it time for you to increase your team’s prospecting skills?

We are half way through 2017. Are your teams achieving their sales goals? What’s the biggest surprise so far this year? Many of my clients tell me their biggest wish is to get their team to prospect for new business. How much time are you investing in developing your team’s prospecting skills?

If you tell me how much time your people are prospecting, I can tell you how close they are to reaching their sales goals. I’m constantly surprised how few account managers prospect for new business.  Social selling, better lead generation, and increasing use of CRM and people are still coming up short on their sale quotas. How many of your best sales performers don’t prospect?

Prospecting is critical to your organization’s success. You know this, but many of you struggle to get your people prospecting. Things are changing, over 50% of the training materials I get from clients does not include an extensive section on prospecting. How often do you work with your people on prospecting?

I’ve got good news for you. I’ve found a great resource to help you jumpstart your prospecting training. It’s a great book by Mark Hunter called High Profit Prospecting. You can grab a copy on Amazon Kindle for only $2:98 this month. It’s a great deal. I also picked up a copy of it on Audible so I can listen to it when I’m working out. It’s a great investment for your prospecting tool kit.

I bought several copies because of the many prospecting checklists and questions in the book.  That and the fact I coach my clients’ account managers between their sales meetings. High-Profit Prospecting makes coaching people on prospecting easy.

If you bought no other sales training book this year, this book will help your team achieve and exceed your sales goal together. I have this book on the top of my desk so I can use it when talking with clients about prospecting on the phone. Enough marketing for today.

Let me share several questions Mark Hunter has at the beginning of part two. You can tell why Mark is such a great sales coach. He believes in what he calls high profit prospecting. He wants to help you find your best clients. I’ll share several of his questions, but you should grab a copy of his book.

The first question is: What about my prospecting process is compelling to the customer? Bang! Ask your sales team to share their answers in a group and watch the lights go on. I believe the best way to coach is by finding great examples on your team. This allows your superstars to help grow your team’s results through sharing their answers. Not one that you come up with.

The second prospecting question Mark asks is: Does my prospecting process result in the customer having false expectations about what I sell, and thus force me to spend time later in the sales process reshaping them?  As a sale manager, how many times do you have to help reshape and clarify a client’s expectations? Are you getting calls from customers who feel they were misled through the sales process? This doesn’t make your job any easier.

The third and final question I’ll share today: Is my prospecting process effective enough to help reduce the amount of time I spend negotiating with customers?” How many times do your sales people struggle to build enough value through the sales process? Sales professionals who start building value during the prospecting process are more likely to get what they expect at the end of the sales process.

Mark Hunter’s prospecting process helps ensure success for your account manager by helping eliminate bad customers at the beginning of the sales process. The process Mark shares in his book and training make it easier for you to work with your account manager to find better, more valuable customers.

I bet if you grab a copy of Marks’s book and you start using to work with your team, you will see an immediate improvement in your sales team’s prospecting performance! This book is just that good, and you’re a great sales manager! Want to know about Mark Hunter?  Check out his website for more great resources. You’ll be glad you did!

Have a great weekend. See you next week.