Sales Prospecting Is At A Crossroads

Many of us in the world of selling find ourselves standing at a crossroads when it comes to prospecting for new leads.

You may work for a firm that mandates you employ the same prospecting methodology that has been in place for a decade or longer. You might be in a new firm trying to sort though the balancing of relatively passive prospecting activities such as e-mail with more aggressive traditional approaches such as cold calling.

You might just be in a state of general confusion over what methods work best at generating new prospects for your business. There seems to be an “old school” path and a “new school” path to prospecting effectively. How can you choose the right path for you?

The simple answer is that there isn’t a simple answer! The best solution for prospecting should consider several of the simple tenets outlined below:

•  “Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting people who don’t.” Seth Godin
• The average businessperson receives 150 to 250 e-mails a day and you have less than 3 seconds before the recipient hits the “delete” button! If you are going to use e-mail you had better grab them FAST.
• “Content Marketing” can be a very effective tool in generating prospects but don’t count on it as a “quick fix” or the only avenue to get new prospects. I know several unemployed sales reps that attempted to blog their way to success as their sole approach to prospecting.
• Social Media is quickly rising as a major force in successful prospecting efforts but the same words of caution apply as stated with content marketing. Be VERY careful thinking social media is the only prospecting approach you will need.
• The death of cold calling has been greatly exaggerated. It isn’t dead it just doesn’t work as well as it did last year or the year before that in the traditional application. See my blog “Cold Calling Isn’t Dead It’s Just Better Dressed” for more on this subject and prospecting in general.
• Referrals are KING. While you obviously know that to be a true statement it amazes me how few companies actually have an effective PROACTIVE referral generation plan actively in place and being maximized.
• Networking is widely recognized as a valuable compliment to your prospecting efforts but you can invest a TON of time and effort without realizing a TON of real results. Focus on building a productive business network versus just attending networking functions.

My best advice when people ask what is the most effective approach to prospecting success is this: make sure you don’t put all your eggs into ANY one basket. A good mix of networking, LinkedIn, Twitter, e-mail, intentional referral generation, and content marketing ALL aligned towards generating outbound dials to people interested in hearing from you makes for the best plan.