Do you make time to prospect every day?

Passle

This article provides a fantastic reminder to all of us that you must find the time every day to prospect.

In addition to prospecting I find it is valuable to wake up every morning and think 'what am I doing on my current opportunities to move them forward' - obvious but probably surprising how this can skip your mind...

The trick to doing this is having a clear overview in your CRM of open/active opportunities. If you don't I would get this setup and either automate a report to your phone or have it as a bookmark.

Coming back to prospecting, where do you start? If you are executing an account based marketing approach you know where you are aiming, the question is how do you approach the prospect. My post on Monday mentioned Basho emailing, this relies on you researching the prospect (more details here). In any event, understand your target persona and then start with a simple search on Google (or other), LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Podcasts and find a common ground to build your approach around.

Most importantly relate your approach to your own buying experience. You rarely make a major buying decision after one conversation so make sure when prospecting you are authentic, honest and backing up the conversation with an online trail of expertise. This approach will enable you to stay forefront of mind and ahead of the competition.

Without daily prospecting, your sales funnel will dry up and your business may falter. It’s as simple as that. There will be a million distractions pulling you away from this essential part of your job, but none of them are more important than this key step to sales success. You need to consciously embrace, not just accept but actually embrace, the idea that prospecting is a must-do item every single working day of your life, and some of your days off as well. Set aside 30 minutes every day and guard that time like your life depends upon it, because your business does. Despite all of the other responsibilities that make demands on your time, you must hold the time you set aside for prospecting sacred.