28: The "sales truth" about prospecting success

Are you spending enough time on prospecting? Probably not. According to Mike Weinberg in sales truth

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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 Monahan , and I'm using my experiences in B2B sales to bring you simple, actionable ideas every day to help you get better.

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Welcome to episode 28 of the podcast and the tip from for this episode comes from Mike Weinberg in his book sales truth, and as you might imagine from a guy that writes a book that's name is sales truth, he talks a lot of truth. He takes candid to a whole new level and he's not afraid to speak his mind and and hit you pretty hard between the eyes with what the reality is that he sees and probably you're experiencing in this area. I think if you're someone who's not entirely happy with the amount of quality opportunities in your pipeline, you're not alone. Um, I know many salespeople teams and frankly sales leaders, managers who look at their pipelines and are not that happy either. And having a, a smaller pipeline causes stress, I'll run, right? It puts a lot of focus on you as an individual. And as I , there's rappers , a manager to execute really well on those that you have to be able to hit your numbers. There's no room for error and things could get embarrassing pretty quickly if we don't fall through and execute that well. Um, it is amazing how a lot of ills, less sale sales, pain, seller pain , uh, problems that we experience can all be solved by just having a really good healthy pipeline of qualified opportunities. We take away that stress, right? We don't have to execute so well. Uh, we, our mindset changed a little bit. It's not like we have to close all four or five, eight, whatever the number is to reach our numbers. You know, we've got 20 to work with and we just need some of those to close in the period and them we've hit our goals and then you know, that gets us into accelerator land. When you have that cushion, then you come across as someone who's not desperate, not trying to push something through, not trying to get a prospect to do unnatural things to get orders done in your timeline. Um, but anyway, sorry, I digress . From the main point about , uh, having enough opportunities in the pipeline. So let me read directly from Mike Weinberg's book chapter five to win more new sales requires focus on winning new sales. Scratching your head over the title of this chapter. I sure hope so. What I'm about to share with you is what I'm compelled to tell executives, managers, and salespeople several times per week. The reason most salespeople , our sales teams are not bringing in new business at the desired rate is because they spend very little time focused on bringing in new business. If that sentence has you wondering why you pay good money for a book with such common sense advice. Imagine how CEOs feel when I tell them the exact same thing right after depositing their check for my consulting fee. It is not rocket science. It's fricking sales. You don't need an advanced degree or really even much sales acumen to come to the same conclusion. All you must do is watch how salespeople spend their time. And that's directly from Mike spoke sales truth. And look , I think the observation is dead on, but I think the temptation from many people is to lay the blame just on salespeople just on the sales team. But there's a lot more at play here. The companies themselves, and I'm sure many of you have experienced this, where you get asked to do a whole bunch of things that aren't directly to do with bringing in new business. You might have to, you know, work on reports and feed things up to the senior leadership. You might have to look after existing customers and feel like you're sucked into babysitting type activities. Um, there's all sorts of things that come at us that take away our time. But at the end of the day, it's something that we have to figure out. We're in a profession that is a no excused profession. The implications of not hitting numbers over time and not producing the results are that our jobs become questionable. And it's usually most sales cultures, it's not okay to say yes but and have you know, reasons why they ever happened. Um, in most sales cultures that , that I knew of, the leadership would rather you said no to some of the extraneous activities and focused on the new business and got results and got a wrap on the knuckles for not doing the things on the outer edges as opposed to not delivering your results. So the question is how can you spend more time prospecting? Not can you write as long as something that is, is a , is optional. If you tell yourself that is not optional, that you spend time on prospecting, you just have to figure out how you fit in, fit it into your calendar. And imagine this, and this is a made up scenario, but this, if someone said to you that next week, you absolutely have to spend 10 hours actually prospecting , uh , during the workweek. And I'm not saying thinking about prospecting or planning, prospecting or working on your pets for prospecting or you know , like that, but actually doing the prospecting. So someone said to you, listen, your job depends on you spending 10 hours next week just doing the actual prospecting. How would you do that? Right? How would you fit that into your week? Because this is all about priorities. Um, you, you say this is a number one, two or three priority is much higher priority than other things. Let me focus in on making sure this thing happens because for my success, it is not optional. And then just make sure that you don't let any distractions get into in your head. Don't let distractions come at you from outside your head, from the world around you, from people and from the company. And don't let these are things derail you. And you'll find that you'll get in the mindset of got to focus on the prospecting to make sure it actually happens.

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The episode is sponsored by unstoppable dot du . 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 deeper

for much better. Find out more and even get a free sales book@bitesizesales.com and now it's a wrap up as Pedro Vidal, VP of sales.

Blackberry silence may or may not have one said training with our implementation is just entertainment and prepare entertainment when Monaghan does it. So make sure you take action on what you learn 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, gone to sell

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