Aggressive Prospecting

In this chal­leng­ing mar­ket today, con­sis­tent and some­times aggres­sive prospect­ing will be key to keep your busi­ness mov­ing for­ward. The idea of aggres­sive prospect­ing is hard for most sales and mar­ket­ing guys to swal­low. In a good econ­o­my, prospect­ing was easy. A sales guy did­n’t have to do it! Instead, the office fed him qual­i­ty leads all day long. If he was good, he’d close the deal 50+% of the time and con­tin­ue this cycle. Now, being a sales­man is a tough busi­ness, and it takes years of train­ing and doing to become an expert. But, being just a good sales­man isn’t enough when faced with dif­fi­cult times. Les­son from History Years ago, dur­ing and after the Great Depres­sion, prospect­ing, lead gen­er­a­tion and clos­ing was all the same thing. A sales­man had to hit the streets, knock on doors, make cold vis­its and calls and learn all about rejec­tion to make a sale. If he did not prospect he made no mon­ey. We can learn some­thing from that era: aggres­sive and dili­gent prospect­ing works! If you want to keep ahead of your com­pe­ti­tion and grow your busi­ness in a down econ­o­my, you need to have a prospect­ing plan. You need to get out­side of your com­fort zone. Where to Begin To begin a prospect­ing plan in your ser­vice busi­ness, start by hir­ing the right peo­ple. Make sure they have NO head trash and are com­fort­able mak­ing phone calls and meet­ing new prospects. Once you find the right peo­ple, give them the prop­er train­ing to refine their skills, agree to a good com­mis­sion or salary and send them to the streets. Their goal is to meet and greet poten­tial prospects that would be a good fit for your busi­ness and sign them up for an esti­mate or meet­ing. If you already have a sea­soned sales­man who pro­duces great results, he might make a good prospec­tor. You will just have to break him down a bit and get him use to the idea of aggres­sive prospect­ing. In this mar­ket, you need ​“all hands on deck.” All your employ­ees must pull their own weight too. If they are not onboard ask­ing for refer­rals or sell­ing addi­tion­al work, replace them. You are build­ing a team, a loy­al team. Your job as the own­er or busi­ness man­ag­er is to moti­vate, encour­age, track results and reward for a job well done. The bot­tom­line is this: if your com­pa­ny is con­sis­tent in this mar­ket to active­ly look for work, out­side your nor­mal source of leads, you will sail ahead of your com­pe­ti­tion and leave them fight­ing an end­less bat­tle of sur­vival. Be a maverick!