At some point in a quarter, or at least a year, the proactive prospecting activities that have worked to fill our funnel stop working. No matter the type, prospect or talk tracks the activities that were working last week aren’t this week and might not for weeks to come.
While this is massively frustrating its also an opportunity to adjust. Specifically, the time, pace or place of our prospecting. The “different time, different pace, different place” mantra was taught to me by a Hungarian gentleman when I was in high school taking soccer coaching certification, but it’s just as applicable in a prospecting context.
Below are examples of different times, paces and places that our clients have found successful when their proactive prospect activities aren’t creating the conversations or booked meetings that our clients have come to expect.
Different Time
- 3x9 – make three prospecting calls before 9am. We’ll probably get three voicemails, but once in a while we’ll actually get a live prospect on the phone. Either way 3x9 builds momentum that carries us through the day and makes our other prospecting less mentally draining.
Different Pace
- Sprints – a sprint, especially with an accountability partner with whom we chat with immediately before to pump each other up and immediately after to celebrate successes, can create more momentum and more effective prospecting conversations than slog through a giant calendar block of prospecting.
Different Place
- Shifting focus to larger (or smaller) prospects – a colleague of mine, before I joined Sandler, would focus on a specific vertical market every month, which kept their prospecting conversations fresh and created carryover into following months as the prospects uncovered in month one turned into clients in month two. When the fish aren’t biting at our usually fishing holes shifting our focus to a new body of water or shifting from smaller fish to bigger fish (or vice versa) typically results in our funnel growing at the top.
Those are just three of over a dozen examples our clients came up with. As we seek to finish 2020 strong and create momentum for a fantastic 2021 consider the time, pace and place of your prospecting and how you could make small adjustments to realize massive results.
Until next time… go sell something.