Sales Prospecting | Proactive Lead Generation

Created 8 years ago in Sales & Marketing / Sales & Lead Generation

Lots of salespeople and business owners can sell and sell well.

And still – most skilled and talented sellers experience extreme peaks and valleys in sales from month to month.

Only a unicorn few seem to have the secret to consistent monthly sales consistent growth year over year.

Here’s the secret: They are hunters.

The business owners and salespeople we all admire don’t sit back and wait for marketing to provide leads or their inbound strategy to hit critical mass. They take matters into their own hands an initiate sales conversations.

These unicorns proactively generate leads. They prospect relentlessly and consistently. It’s the only way to maintain true momentum in sales.

I certainly agree that cold-calling and other forms of interruption marketing can come off as intrusive and sleazy. Having experiences poor salesmanship as buyer myself I was very resistant to cold-calling and any kind of proactive lead generation or prospecting when I first got into sales.

BUT – The proof is in the pudding (pudding = millions of dollars in revenue).

I’ve learned over the years that it wasn’t interruption marketers (telemarketers, door-to-door salespeople, etc.) that bothered me, it was poor execution of their tactics and a disregard for proper lead qualifying that irked me.

There is an art and science to interrupting someone’s day and having them say, “Thank you!” for it. In my experience building off your successes while prospecting is the most likely way to take a cold introduction to a warm conversation.

I will help you:

- Overcome mental blocks about prospecting and/or making cold-calls.

- Learn the basics and advance nuance of getting past gatekeepers.

- Make prospecting a regular part of your day without burning out.

- Leverage tools that will eliminate busy work and playing phone tag with your prospects.

Prospecting tactics we can talk about:

- In-Person / D2D

- Phone / Telemarketing

- Email (Manual and/or Semi-Automated)

- Social Selling (Leveraging Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. to start sales conversations)

- Converting event and conference leads into paying customers

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Still not sure I can help you?

Watch my recent interview, Overcoming Your Fear of Sales and Cold-Calling: http://bit.ly/2o5kF9X

[1:55] What does successful cold-calling really look like?

[5:09] What’s the worst thing that can happen while cold-calling?

- What is the real goal of prospecting activity? (HINT: It’s not to close new business)

- What does adequate follow-up really look like?

- How much follow-up is too much?

[30:39] When asking for referrals isn’t appropriate (or – just intimidates you) can you still tap into a contact’s personal network to sell smarter?