21: Finding it hard to start prospecting?

Ever sat at your desk knowing that you should be doing some prospecting, but you find every reason not to do it. You're only human or this happens to you from time to time or perhaps even more often. There are three Ps that are holding you back from prospecting, but there's a simple way to overcome them. So says Jeb Blount in Fanatical Prospecting.

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Welcome to the bite-size sales podcast where we believe that sales is the most important team and a B2B company, that the sales team deserves great sales skills training, but usually doesn't get it, and that taking bite-size steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results. I am your host, Andrew Monaghan, and I'm using my experiences and B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas every day to help you get better.

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Procrastination, perfectionism and paralysis by analysis are the three PS that hold us back from prospecting, says Jeb blunt in his book, fanatical prospecting. And I think I suffer from all three of these in my career and probably even in the last month and procrastination being the gold medal winner in the depths of my, my little Scottish brain. I remember a few years ago as it one company , uh, I was uh , in the front line sales organization and it was a pretty hardcore prospecting world. We were a startup trying to make our mark and get first meetings with people that have never even heard of our company name before. So it was hardcore prospecting and I was making a bunch of cold calls and emails and all the things that we do. And then we purchased as a sales organization, a power dialer, which you, some of you may be familiar with. Basically you plug in your list of people that your , you're going to call and they call 10 to 15 of them at a time and then connect you as soon as someone picks up the phone. So your experiences that you can sit there and you see them dialing away and suddenly you hear a beep and it tells you who you've connected to and you immediately go on the conversation. It's pretty hardcore. I'm in the process of the onboarding. When this company, I was set up with a one on one call with their trainer and my thought that this was someone who's gonna jump on the phone and explain to me, well, here's what these buttons do and here's how you low your list and things like that. And there was definitely a bit of that. Um, so she went through that and then we loaded my list up and then she suddenly said, okay, your list is loaded. I'm going to hit the start button and it's going to start making the calls, get ready to talk to the first person that picks up. And I think my heart just about jumped out of my chest, right? I was sitting there going , you've gotta be kidding me. Right? And I tried to stammer about all, look, I'm busy. I've got other calls to do, I've got more important things to do. All the kind of, you know, procrastination things started coming out of my mouth and in my head really can I try to hold me back? But then a day she pressed the button and I can see it making calls. So I shut up and started watching it and sure enough got connected to the first one, heard the beep and you know, luckily I'd be making cold calls because I kind of went straight into autopilot mode and , and just started doing what I did, give the, you know, the first few few seconds to try and get the conversation going. And away I went. And much to her surprise , uh, I actually got a meeting on that first call. I think it was someone to Disney. I'd been trying to get hold off and I was even more surprised in her, right. And I just couldn't believe it, right. This totally taken out of my comfort zone. But overall the things that are holding me back and just started making the calls for me, which was the key , um, and it too hard just to put me in the uncomfortable position for me to take and put me straight into action without any choice. And it's interesting. In in Jeb blunt spoke as he talks about the three P's , the procrastination, perfectionism and paralysis by analysis and he talks about how it comes up in our prospecting world, so to read from the book. When I'm working with salespeople who are being held back by all or one of the three P's , I get them focused on making just one call. Then the next, then the next one call at a time. Sometimes I get a list and sit next to them and dial two . When they see that I'm not getting blown out of the water by prospects, it gets easier for them to let go and take action. Sometimes I have to be a bit more direct to get them to jump into prospecting. The solution is to push them hard to just do it. Just pick up the phone and make the call. Let the what ifs take care of themselves. I know that might sound a bit harsh, but a push is sometimes what's required to break this destructive cycle is not much different from how I learned to swim. We've all found ourselves in the crushing grip of the three PS . I observed salespeople endlessly obsessing and overthinking the potential outcomes of prospecting calls almost every day of my professional life. They convince themselves that they need to gather more facts, just need a little bit more training, or the timing is not quite right. They squander time worrying about what ifs . I look at me with puppy dog eyes, pleading for more time to get it right before diving in the human mind, a bores , the unknown. It is natural state. It wants to be safe and secure. It doesn't like jumping off of a diving board into a cold Lake or picking up a phone and calling a stranger. A panics in the face of changing clings to the status quo. Then it begins to give Vince us that all kinds of awful dark consequences are imminent , but at some point you've got to do something. Sometimes you just need a coach poss or a coach jab to push you to take action regardless of your situation. The one thing you can be sure of is that allowing the three PS to stand in the way of prospecting extracts a high emotional and financial cost. So there you have it. So the example that a he gave in the book is not that dissimilar to what happened to me with that trainer from the, the power dialer , uh, con , uh, company that we started working with. And in a day just making that first call, just some sort of forward momentum can make such a difference as you're looking to inject some, some activity into your Indiana thing, but also into your, your prospecting. So make that call, send that email, send that text, whatever it has to be, and then do it again and then do it again. Um, one of the laws of , uh, sales physics I've heard says that an object in motion is much harder to stop than an object or complete standstill. So once you get going, it's easier to tick the next one and the next one. And the next one. So the takeaway from this episode is take that first step. It will make all the difference

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The episode is sponsored by unstoppable dot. Do most sales teams are not trained effectively in the skills and mindset they deserve, and these are the most important people in the company. It's no wonder that only about 50% of reps make quarter every year. Unstoppable is a service that helps sellers and leaders get great at the skills and mindset they need without taking time out of the field. It exists because if the sales team has the right skills and mindset, they thrive. They are confident,

and you perform much better. Find out more. And even get a free sales book@bitesizesales.com no to wrap up as Mike Ferrari AVS

P sales at Tinian may or may not have one side training with our implementation is just entertainment and pre entertainment when Monahan does it. So make sure you take action on what you learned and keep getting better every day . This world does not need more sales BS, so don't create anymore. Be great at the fundamentals. Be honest, be real. Be yourself. Just do not be us. And finally, I'm setting off as the great Joe Sexton would by saying, going to sell

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