What control do you have over the quality and quantity of your sales prospects?
Some sales people have painfully few prospects, while some have more than they can handle. As a rule, I would not want to be in either group, the first group for obvious reasons, and the second because I don’t believe the quality of the prospects will be good. In fact, having worked closely with hundreds of salespeople who said they had a full pipeline and “loads of prospects”, I know the quality is going to be poor.
Why is this?…Well I believe it’s all down to human nature, as naturally we will always take the route of least resistance. Imagine, if you could sit comfortably in your cosy air conditioned office sipping coffee, whilst waiting for prospects to come to you via your website, or alternatively you could be cold calling, whether on foot or by phone, which would be most comfortable?
Clearly it’s the “passive” sit in your office and wait for people to come to you, rather than the often excruciatingly uncomfortable act of cold calling. So according to the theory that people naturally take the route of least resistance, most salespeople will opt for the “passive” approach, rather than the “active” cold calling approach. So it’s no surprise that most sales people have such poor quality prospects, as mostly they come from “passive” prospecting rather than “active” prospecting.
Active prospecting, which includes cold calling, gives the salesperson infinitely more control over the quality and quantity of their sales prospects and hence their sales pipeline. Passive prospecting gives the salesperson limited control, especially over quality. Think about it, when a prospect researches your company on the internet, they will also have researched your competition. Furthermore, at this stage they will never properly differentiate between you and your competitors, other than choosing the cheapest.
Passive prospecting does work sometimes, but inevitably invites price competition and it never cuts out the competition. Active prospecting is always uncomfortable, hard work and frequently emotionally bruising, but if you can get over and manage this discomfort to do it consistently and well, then you will be assured of quality prospects. Sadly, most people never stick with active prospecting long enough to get good, and so the common but deeply flawed perception is that cold calling doesn’t work.