Leaking Lifeboats and Sales Prospecting

Gordie Allen — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:39:52 +0000

They share a common trait of not being pro-active b2b sales prospectors. It’s as though their DNA has been altered to avoid any effort to find either in-person or on-line – sales prospects: people with a qualified need plus the ability to pay for what they sell.

Where do they congregate? At ‘free networking’ luncheons, seminars or social networking mixers where they rub elbows with others, who also share their bone-shaking fear or inability to begin some form of systematic or organized sales prospecting.

Great talkers! Big fans of indiscriminately handing out business cards or leaving them on tables strategically placed in high traffic zones with the distant hope a serious prospect will conveniently pick up their card and call them to place an order. Voila, rejectionless sales!

In these hard times of high foreclosure rates, failing businesses, Obama’s stimulus programs and tight money, this group is growing very rapidly. Because they refuse to go out and look for new business, they have an abundance of free time in their 8-5 days so they continually rehearse the process of ‘getting ready to sell’, but never really do it.

I liken this delusional group to ‘lifeboat occupants’ who because there are so many of them in such a confined space, their lifeboat has sprung a leak and it is gradually sinking into a Sea of Despair and Quiet Desperation.

Is there any hope for them? Only, if they are forced to confront reality. Not a willing choice, since it may be forced upon them by employees, loved ones or the power company who just turned off their electricity on a 30 degree night. This new reality leads to 3 choices:

1. Another career because getting new prospects is a fact of life in sales.

2. Discovery of a less threatening new process of getting new prospects.

3. Repeated application and fine-tuning this new process until it works.

Number 3 is the most difficult since it requires: effort, failure, re-dedication, re-application until it bears fruit. Sadly, for many adult learners, failure is not an acceptable option which is very strange to me.

We teach our children to take their first baby steps and we winch when they fall down. Yet, we urge them to get up and try it again, again, again; until they succeed. Isn’t this failing and learning from the failure process? Kids are little failing robots. They fail, they re-try and fail again and then aha, they succeed!

How can we make failure less embarrassing? By failing in private when no one else is watching other than the person we are soliciting. Fact: Unless this person re-contacts us, we will probably not meet them again unless they sit next to us in church! So, get over a fear of failure and, instead: accept failure as a huge part of the succeeding process.

Effective sales prospecting which leads to new business, the lifeblood of all companies, requires accepting failure as an important part of the success process. Next week, I’ll continue this discussion with: Good Failures!

Sales Prospecting Tips » pro-active

Leaking Lifeboats and Sales Prospecting