"Why You Hate Prospecting"

You’ve probably have prospecting figured all wrong.  It’s a simple mistake really and I bet you got it wrong right from the very beginning of your career.  Likely, when you started, someone told you that prospecting was the activity to find new prospects for business. You prospect to find prospects.  That sounds simple enough, but it’s still wrong. And, that’s why you hate prospecting.  But, you can change that in a second…

Prospecting is not about finding buyers.  Prospecting is about eliminating non-buyers.  This may sound like a subtle difference but it makes all the difference.

Here’s what I mean.  If you are working hard to find the one prospect that “falls out” of a list of 100 suspects, then you have much more failure than you have success.  When your target is that one, then you have a lot of failure before you achieve your goal.  This is depressing and very hard work.

Nobody likes that much failure.  That’s probably why the old proverb makes so much sense: “Your degree of success is determined by the amount of failure you will take before you quit.” They are directly related. 

If you will only absorb a little bit of failure before you give up, you will only achieve a limited amount of success.  If you will accept a great deal of failure before you quit, your potential rewards are dramatically greater.

OK, it’s a subtle difference but your perspective on your work is substantially different when you look at prospecting as eliminating the non-buyers.  Then, you “win” every time you cross off another name as someone who isn’t right for what you are selling.  Cross off enough of them and you really win because you’re that much closer to a buyer. You’ll also be in a better mood when you do.

If you can see prospecting as getting past the non-buyers to uncover the buyers, your attitude is better and that just helps you along.  Focusing on finding buyers makes the role much more tedious.  You just have the wrong perspective.

Think of prospecting like panning for gold.  The key there is to move as much sand through the pan or the sluice so that you make the reality of the number of gold nuggets in the sand work for you.  Sure, you could find a gold nugget in the first pan or shovel full of sand and sometimes you do. 

But that would be more luck than reality.  The truth is that you have to move a lot of sand to find a nugget. On balance, you also have to move a lot of non-buyers to find a buyer -- Just like you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find Royalty.

When you focus on the sand you get a much better understanding of the job at hand and are not as likely to be depressed when it takes time to find your gold.  You know it takes work to be successful.

You might think this idea counter-intuitive, but one of the ways to separate the gold from the sand is to remember that people have to “qualify” to work with you.  So many of us look at prospecting as finding someone we can qualify to work with yet the opposite is more true than you might believe.

Yes, prospects have to qualify.  Despite what you might think, not everyone out there is golden for your business. Some are just sand.   

I remember O. Alfred Granum’s words on this topic in his book, “The Art and the Science of Building a Life Insurance Clientele”.  What he said then is still true today and applies to all of us.

To paraphrase, he said that potential consumers of life insurance had to qualify on three criteria to deal with an agent.

1.    They had to have sufficient intelligence to understand the nature of the discussion. If they didn’t (or wouldn’t) appreciate that the loss of human life value equaled a loss of financial value, then, you didn’t have someone to talk to.

2.    The second was a “deep sense of responsibility”.  If this potential financial loss to them or their family or business didn’t matter to them, then they weren’t a candidate for the product.

3.    Finally, they had to have a strong belief in their own economic potential.  If all that mattered to them was attending to next weekend’s adult beverage requirements, they weren’t for you.  If they were just hoping to get by, you were on the wrong trail for this product.  Prospects have to have dreams.

Take this new perspective and rethink prospecting. Realize that it is work for everyone.  Remember that prospects have to qualify to work with you as much as you do with them. Mostly, remember that you are “sifting and winnowing” as Granum said, through the chaff to find the wheat. Eliminate non-buyers and you’ll understand prospecting for what it is.  And then, you’ll find many more buyers than you imagined.

I’m Jim Ruta, and that’s just the way it is. 

August 3, 2010