The Sales Archaeologist

As I am in the middle of reviewing the analysis of two larger sales organizations - one a  software company and the other a unique data center technology company I came across that page in the report that talks about the sales people's ability and willingness to prospect. Time and again there are people in a sales role that fall into the category of "will never prospect" and this is always interesting to me. Why be in sales at all?

Then there are those that will only prospect "if made to do so" and this probably represents the majority of folks we run into. Both of these findings got me thinking that I should talk about the value of prospecting - of course there is a financial value if you find opportunities - but beyond that I propose that prospecting on a regular basis should be part of every sales professionals weekly regimen - why? Well think about what it forces you to do more than any other activity:

• Deal with your weaknesses like need for approval.
• Express your value proposition succinctly and under pressure.
• Focus on tonality and other phone skills fundamentals.
• Get an accurate feel for how your DM's feel about your service or product.
• Fine tune your positioning based on actual responses and not theory.
• Gain experience lowering resistance to your message.
• Keep a skeptical view of prospects.

Why are these things valuable? Well consider the opposite outcome of each bullet. So often we work with Veteran sales people who have fallen off the prospecting wagon long ago and to be quite honest veterans are often the hardest folks to train and they usually have acquired lot's of bad habits that come from this alienation. So even if your company provides leads or even if you personally are not required to prospect in my opinion - you should do it anyway just to stay sharp.