You can’t fail at prospecting – unless you fail to prospect

In my role I am fortunate enough to work with many different types of businesses and I get to see lots of different and fascinating products. However, they all have one thing in common – customers!

For most of us  customers don’t just arrive, they don’t just  pitch up on our door step and say we want some of your stuff. We have to go and find them. We have to make sure we can be easily found. Oh, and unfortunately, our customers often have short memories, or other pressing issues, so we have to be persistent.

The secret to successful businesses is not being brilliant whenever we are in front of customers, although that helps. The real secret is getting in front of them in the first place.

There are a 101 different reasons every business owner tells me why he did no prospecting this week, including – I had customer jobs to deliver, I had people off sick and I had to do their jobs, the roof was leaking, the cat was sick, the VAT was due…….

The secret is simple – JDI, Just Do It – every day, a little but often. Build it into your daily to do list. Sure you may have push backs, and fail, but to succeed, you often have to fail first, fast and learn from it.

Here is an example of this in action. Working with a local company recently, their sales had been steady for the last few years, but the owner was frustrated as he felt he could be doing so much more. As well as learning sales techniques, we adopted three simple behaviours that are producing new work –

• Make a point of visiting every major client once a month – and not just when they call because there is a problem or their contract is due for renewal. This simple and painless prospecting activity has already expanded his business with new business, as many clients did not appreciate the full range of services they now offer
• As he has been in business for many years, he has a large data base of previous clients. Every week, he now makes a point of calling 25 of these a week. Guess what this has led to!

At the same time, he and his team are getting into the habit of asking for referrals at every opportunity. Then we also build in accountability – every week he is measured and has to send me a report – because what gets planned, gets done and can be measured.

As confidence builds we will introduce other prospecting activities, and build on this success.

So, the message is simple – you won’t fail at prospecting, unless you fail to prospect.

Figure 1. To be successful – make sure prospecting features on your to do list every day.