Latest / Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth / 1: Prospecting as a way of life

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1: Prospecting as a way of life · Cyber Go-To-Market Talk: The Cybersecurity Podcast About Cyber Sales, Marketing & Revenue Growth

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you are wondering how your approach to prospecting and your mindset for prospecting compares to great salespeople, you are going to love this episode based on Jeb Blunt's book, Fanatical Prospecting.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Bite-sized sales podcast, where we believe that sales is the most important team in a B2B company, that complacency is the enemy, and taking bite-sized steps each day to get better at your craft is the best way to improve results.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Andrew Monahan, and I'm using my 26 years of experience in B2B sales to bring you small, actionable ideas every day to help you get better.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: When I look back on my career, when there's been times where I haven't done so well, it's almost always to do with pipeline problems.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't put the work in many months beforehand to build the appropriate pipeline to be able to close it in the quarters of the year in which I'm struggling.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can trace it right back to things that were in my control that I did not do.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do the work, I didn't do it well enough, I didn't do it consistently enough.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And prospecting is one of these things that we all have to do it.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Very few of us actually love it, but it's so important to be able to do it right.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in Jeb Blunt's book, Fanatical Prospecting, he says, superstars view prospecting as a way of life.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: They prospect with single-minded focus, worrying little about what other people think of them.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: They enthusiastically dive into telephone prospecting, email prospecting, cold calling, networking, asking for referrals, knocking on doors, following up on leads, attending trade shows, and striking up conversations with strangers.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: They don't make excuses, oh, this is not a good time to call because they might be at lunch.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't complain, nobody's calling me back.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: They don't whine, the leads are bad.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: They don't live in fear, what if she says no?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or what if this is a bad time?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: They don't procrastinate, I don't have the time right now, I'll probably catch up tomorrow.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: They prospect when times are good because they know that a rainy day is right around the corner.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: They prospect when times are bad because they know that fanatical prospecting is the key to survival.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: They prospect even when they don't feel like prospecting because they are driven to keep their pipeline full.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Superstars are aware that failure in sales is not caused by a deficit of talent, skills, or training, not a poor territory or inferior product, not subpar communication and presentation skills, not a failure to ask for the business and close, not terrible sales managers.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: The brutal fact is the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yet countless salespeople and sales managers who marvel at the consistent year-in and year-out performance of superstars are blind to the real reason for their success, unwilling to accept that the foundational root of all success in sales is a fanatical focus on prospecting.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: They waste time tilting at windmills on their chaotic pursuit of fads, silver bullets, and secret formulas they believe will deliver them into the arms of success with little effort.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Very motivational, inspiring, you know, very brutal as well.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, hard facts, the truth that he's seen out there consulting with many different companies.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: What I like about this is a couple of things.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: One is he calls out that the superstars do many different types of prospecting.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: As he says, they enthusiastically dive into all these different ways to try and reach the people that they want to reach.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's so important.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the concepts I've talked about is the idea of, you know, if you get your ideal prospect, the ideal person you want to go and meet with, and you know who it is, that you have an approach of prospecting called get them surrounded.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: You use all ways open to you to try and reach that person, to have that important conversation and relationship that's going to help transform what they do in a way that means business for you.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the many different approaches is was was super good about how he wrote this.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing is that a lot of what he talks about is mindset.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, prospecting is is as everyone knows, is a beat down at times.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's you feel like you're doing a lot of work for not much return.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: You feel like there's gotta be always be a better way.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: The temptation, as you kind of grind through it, is to search for that silver bullet, is to try and you know, reach for something that might be the magic pill that somehow makes it all better.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day, the mindset to approach is just enthusiastically go after these things, as he says, as a way of life.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when I think about some of the great prospectors I've worked with over the years, it is just how they do things.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: They block the time to go do it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: It happens, there's no ins and outs or excuses or reasons why it didn't happen.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: They just get on and get it done.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll always, in the past, as the people I've seen, will get the results from doing it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, my ask of you right now is to think about how Jeb starts this book and say, if I'm honest with myself, um, am I doing all the things that he called out there?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: For one, um, do I do them all the time?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, how is my mindset, how am I approaching prospecting?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Am I the person that procrastinates it too much?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Am I the person who relies on other people too much or leads too much?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or can I get better at some of these things to say, if I just approach this a little bit differently with my mindset and how I my beliefs are about prospecting, maybe I might get better results.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can do that, what is my plan to go do that?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone you think would get value.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Co-workers, teammates, your boss, your head of sales, even that guy you worked with two companies ago who could probably do some help.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, just overshare it.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the few times it's cool to do that.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your podcast app will have a share button.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Please click it and share it wide and far.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get the book mentioned in this episode for free, simply go to bite sizesales.com forward slash free book.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you sign up on that page for unstoppable.do, we'll send you your book on us.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Unstoppable gives you habit-forming action notes on great sales books such as Spin Selling, Never Split the Difference, New Sales Simplify, The Challenger Sale, and many more.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: In there you get the best ideas from these books, all organized in a straightforward and easy to implement way, and designed for you to take action and transform your results.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: All at the equivalent of three cups of coffee per month.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Start now and get your free book by going to bite size sales.com forward slash free book.