# Fanatical Prospecting — Chapter-09: The Four Objectives of Prospecting - **Source**: /library/Fanatical Prospecting/source-file.pdf - **PDF pages**: 89–101 - **Pages without text**: none --- 9 The Four Objectives of Prospecting I don’t focus on what I’m up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest. —Venus Williams “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.” The great and oft-quoted Yogi Berra said those words. Sadly, this is how many salespeople approach prospecting— on a wing and a prayer. From the get-go I’ve been clear that my objective is to teach you how to be both efficient and effective with prospecting. Another way to say this is balancing quantity with quality. Knowing your objective for each call makes you more efficient because you are able to build prospecting blocks and group your prospecting channel touches around those objectives. This allows you to move faster and make more prospecting touches in less time. 71 We’ll discuss this further in Chapter 10, “Leveraging the Prospect- ing Pyramid.” Developing a defined objective makes you effective because on each prospecting call, e-mail, social media touch, networking event, or referral request, you know exactly what to ask for and how to bridge to your prospect’s problems to give them a compelling reason to accept your request. The objective is the primary outcome you expect from your prospecting touch. There are four core prospective objectives: ■ Set an appointment. ■ Gather information and qualify. ■ Close a sale. ■ Build familiarity. Your situation, industry, prospect base, product, and service are unique, as will be your prospecting objectives. Here are some quick rules of thumb to get you started when developing prospecting objectives: ■ If you are selling a complex, high-risk, high-cost product or service, your primary objective will most often be an appoint- ment with a qualified decision maker, influencer, or other stakeholder who can help you move the deal forward. Your secondary objective will be to gather information. Your tertiary objective will be to build familiarity. ■ If you are selling a transactional, low-risk, low-cost product or service and you are in inside sales, your primary objective will be closing the sale and secondarily gathering information. ■ If you are selling a transactional, low-risk, low-cost product and you are in outside sales and prospecting via any channel other than in person (phone, e-mail, text, social), your primary objective will be to set an appointment and secondarily to gather information. If you are prospecting in person (“knock- ing” on the prospect’s door), your primary objective will be to close the deal. 72 Fanatical Prospecting ■ If you have a highly qualified database of prospects in your CRM, the primary objective of most of your prospecting calls will be setting appointments as the buying window opens to start the sales process. The secondary objective will be building familiarity to increase the probability that your prospect will engage when the buying window opens. ■ If the product or service you are selling can only be purchased during specific buying windows, like when a contract expires or within a defined budgetary period, gathering information to qualify the buying window will be your primary objective and building familiarity your secondary objective with most calls. You don’t want to waste setting an appointment with a prospect that cannot buy because of contractual or budgetary handcuffs. Once you have identified the buying window, your primary objective will shift to setting an appointment. ■ If you are new in your territory or working for a start-up or new division, your primary objective will be gathering infor- mation so you can identify decision makers and qualify buying windows and budgets. The secondary objective will be to build familiarity. Lots of salespeople stumble from unqualified prospect to unqualified prospect and wonder why, at the end of the day, week, or month, they sold nothing. This is why it is so important to have an objective for every prospecting touch. Prospecting Is a Contact Sport Prospecting, in many ways, is a brutal contact sport that shuns the nuance, art, and finesse of moving a deal through the sales pipe. To be effective, you’ve got to know what you want and ask for it. To be efficient, you’ve got to get in as many prospecting touches as possible during each prospecting block. Prospecting is not for building relationships, selling, or chatting up your buyer. It is for setting the appointment, qualifying, building The Four Objectives of Prospecting 73 familiarity, and when it makes sense, moving into the sales process right on the spot. You don’t need brilliant scripts. You don’t need complex strategies. You don’t need to overcomplicate it. You have no time to waste on small talk, chitchat, or long- winded scripts (or e-mails) written by some dude in marketing who has never been within 50 feet of a prospect. You’ve got to get to the point, ask for what you want, and move on to the next touch. Set an Appointment The most valuable activity in the sales process is a set appointment— no matter where you are in the pipe: initial meeting, discovery meetings, presentations, closing meetings, and so on. To be absolutely clear, an appointment is a meeting that is on your calendar and your prospect’s calendar; in other words, they are expecting you to show up in person or by phone, video call, or web conference at a specific time and date. Many salespeople confuse “Just stop by,” “I’ll be here anytime,” and “Call me maybe” statements from their prospects to be a commitment for an appointment. Let’s not mince words. “Call me maybe” and “Just stop by anytime” are not appointments. To believe that they are, and to put them on your calendar as such, is pure delusion, and, as we’ve already learned, in sales you cannot be delusional and successful at the same time. It is only an appointment when you have a firm commitment for a specific meeting time. Consider how much time is wasted driving to or calling into prospects who are not there because they never had a commitment to be there in the first place. Consider the emotional cost of believing you have firm commitments only to discover that you don’t. Working with prospects who are not committed to moving to the next step—either an initial meeting or a subsequent meeting—is like pushing a rope. You expend a tremendous amount of energy 74 Fanatical Prospecting and emotion trying to move the deal forward, but you never get anywhere. Recently I was working with an outbound inside rep who sells capital equipment to midmarket buyers in the manufacturing space. I followed up with him a few weeks after he and his peers attended a training program we designed for his company. Our dialog: Me: “Armando, tell me how things are going.” Armando: (Sighs) “I guess okay?” Me: “Okay? How do you mean?” Armando: “Well, this appointment thing is not working for me.” Me: “How come?” Armando: “I can’t get anyone to show up.” Me: “What percentage of your appointments are no-shows?” Armando: “I don’t know, I guess around 80 percent of them.” Me: “Okay, tell me about the last one that was a no-show.” Armando: “I had a meeting schedule with Jessica Thomson, a buyer at AmCorp International. She’s never purchased anything from us before, and we had an appointment scheduled to review our line. When I called this morning at 10:00 AM she didn’t answer the phone. I tried several more times until I got her assistant, who said she was traveling.” Me: “Did she accept the meeting request you sent via e-mail?” Armando: “Well, um, I uh, didn’t send one.” Me: “How come?” Armando: “When I called her last week, she said she was super busy and would be happy to meet with me another time. She said she was usually available in the mornings and I could call anytime. I suggested 10:00 AM today and she said that would be fine, to just call her anytime.” Me: “Was that a real commitment to 10 AM on her part or more of a brush-off just to get you off of the phone?” Armando: “I guess when you look at it that way, it was a brush- off.” The Four Objectives of Prospecting 75 Armando and I went through all the appointments he had on his calendarforthenextsevendaysandnot surprisingly,almostall ofthem were “call me maybe” noncommittal wishes he had accepted as real. Delusion gets you nowhere. So here is a simple rule: It is only an appointment when it is on your calendar and your prospect’s calendar and your prospect is expecting you to show up at a specific time, date, and place (physical or virtual). Gather Information and Qualify I’m a big fan of Little League baseball. It is a rite of passage that helps kids build character, hone their values, and learn how to win and lose. Several years back, when my son played Little League, we were fortunate to be on a team with great coaches who invested their time to help our sons learn to love the game. Along the way, they helped our tight-knit group of parents learn a few lessons, too. In one of our most intense games, we were in the bottom of the sixth inning with two outs and the bases loaded. The game was tied. With the winning run on third base, all we needed was a hit to win the game and advance to the play-offs. As our next batter walked from the dugout toward the batter’s box, Coach Sandro pulled him aside for one last pep talk. He kneeled in front of the 10-year-old young man, got a handful of his jersey near the collar, and gave him some sage advice. “Whatever you do,” Coach Sandro admonished, “don’t swing at nothin’ ugly.” As Coach Sandro walked back to his position on the third base line, it struck me how profound his coaching was when applied to sales and frankly, life. If you’ve ever played baseball or softball or watched your kids play, you’ve no doubt witnessed a player chasing a wild pitch—too high, too low, or way outside of the strike zone. The awkward swing of the bat, swishing through thin air, leaves the player 76 Fanatical Prospecting off-balance and embarrassed. It is sometimes funny to watch, but mostly the fans, coaches, and players just echo a collective groan and wonder why in the world the player took a swing at that pitch. It is no different is sales. Each day salespeople waste time, energy, and emotion swinging at ugly deals. Deals that are unprofitable, unqualified, not in the buying window, don’t have a budget, don’t have an identified decision maker, or because of contracts don’t have the ability to buy. From the outside looking in, it is obvious that these low- probability, ugly deals will never close and will divert the sales- person’s time and attention from better opportunities. Yet, in spite of the obvious signs, salespeople forge forward, either delusional or oblivious, placing these deals in their pipelines and projections, wasting endless hours working on ugly deals that will never close. Sadly, the results are predictable. Almost all of these salespeople strike out. Savvy sales professionals are super disciplined in qualifying pros- pects. They understand that time is money and it is a waste of time to work with prospects that are not going to buy. They know that qualified buyers are scarce, and a moment spent with a prospect who will never buy takes them away from their most important task— finding prospects that will buy. It begins with gathering information during prospecting. While setting an appointment is your primary objective with prospects you have already prequalified as potential buyers, gathering information is your primary objective with prospects you have not qualified. Here’s what I mean. If we drew a bell curve from the statistical distribution of qualified prospects in your database/CRM or the potential customers in your market (if you are a start-up and have not yet built a database): ■ A small percentage will be totally qualified and in the buying window (ready for an appointment or ready to buy, in the case of a transactional low-risk product). The Four Objectives of Prospecting 77 ■ A larger percentage will be totally qualified—you know the decision maker, the key influencers, the size of the business, the budget, and your competitors. But, they won’t be in the buying window due to budget restrictions or contractual obligations. ■ A larger percentage will be semi-qualified—you will have some information, but there will be holes in your data. ■ An even larger percentage will be potential buyers, but you will have almost no information about them or the information will be outdated. ■ A small percentage will never be buyers or will be out of business, or the record in the database will be bogus. Your drive as a sales professional should always be to spend your time with the most qualified prospects in your database. This means that you will want to: ■ Set appointments with the prospects that are highly qualified and/or in the buying window ■ Nurture the prospects that you’ve qualified but are not in the buying window ■ Gather information on the prospects for which you have some or no data so you can qualify their potential and learn their buying windows ■ Eliminate the prospect records that are bogus, out of business, too small, too big, or will never be buyers There are some sales experts who will tell you to set an appoint- mentwitheveryprospectandqualifylater.Manyareadamantaboutit. I get their point. They’ve observed so many salespeople use qualifying as a reason to avoid making calls that they figure the best way to get them to prospect is to have them set appointments and do the qualifying once they’re in the meeting. Frankly it probably makes sense to just set the appointment regardless how qualified your prospect is if: ■ You sell a product or service that is noncontractual ■ There is a high probability that most of your prospects will be buyers because your product is something they use all of the time 78 Fanatical Prospecting ■ There is no set budgetary period for making these purchases ■ The decision maker role is fairly consistent and usually a single person However, when your product or service is complex, contractual (especially when the contract requires exclusivity with a single vendor or limited number of vendors), the sales cycle is long, decision making is done at a high level in the organization, there is a defined budgetary period, or budgets need to be approved in advance, your best bet is to qualify first, then set an appointment. Define the Strike Zone The first step in qualifying is to clearly define the strike zone. Far too many companies (especially start-ups and small businesses), sales organizations, and sales professionals fail to develop a profile of a qualified prospect. This includes the optimal time for engaging the prospect prior to the opening of the buying window. Here is a blinding flash of the obvious: If you don’t define the strike zone, you will waste a lot of time chasing ugly deals. This process shouldn’t be difficult. If you work for a big company, just go sit down with your sales manager and some of the more successful reps. They’ll likely have the information you’ll need—decision-making roles, account size, buying windows, budgetary windows, contractual obligations—to build a profile of your ideal opportunity. If you work for a small company or start-up, start by analyzing your product and service delivery strengths and weaknesses. Look for patterns and commonalities among your best customers. Analyze the deals you are closing and gain a deeper understanding of trigger events that open buying windows. Based on the information you know, gauge how soon you need to engage prior to the buying window opening. Uncover common buyer roles. Then develop a The Four Objectives of Prospecting 79 profile of the prospect that is most likely to do business with you and, over the long-term, be a profitable, happy customer. Once you have developed the profile of your ideal customer, you can develop the questions you’ll need to qualify your prospects and identify the best opportunities. Next, make a commitment to measure every prospect, deal, and customer against this profile. When they don’t fit, develop the discipline to walk away. I am not saying that every deal must fit your profile perfectly in order to enter your sales pipe. This is not how the real world works. In some cases, it makes sense to take some risk and swing outside of the strike zone. However, there is a difference in taking a calculated, data-driven risk and chasing an ugly deal. The end goal is keeping your pipeline full of viable, qualified deals that have a high probability of closing. This is why fanatical prospectors use daily prospecting activity to systematically qualify their databases. Heed Coach Sandro’s advice: “Don’t swing at nothin’ ugly.” Close the Sale When you are selling transactional, low-risk, or relatively low-cost products or services and prospecting via phone and in-person chan- nels, your primaryprospecting objective is closing the sale right on the spot. If you are prospecting via e-mail, text, or social channels, your primary objective is to convert that prospecting touch into a sales conversation that leads to closing the sale. When closing the sale is your objective, the prospecting inter- action gets a bit more complicated because you’ve got to engage, qualify, and ask them to commit to giving up their time for a sales conversation right on the spot. On the phone or in person, where you have the highest probability of a one-call close, this means you have to quickly get pastthe initialreflexresponse orbrush-off,askoneortwo questionsto 80 Fanatical Prospecting qualify the opportunity, and gain agreement for an appointment on the spot that gives you the space to ask deeper questions, bridge to a solution, and close the sale. It all happens in the span of a few minutes and it requires poise, confidence, and a fundamental mastery of the sales process. The techniques for closing the sale on a prospecting call (one call close) are beyond the scope of this book. However, we’ll discuss the techniques you’ll need to get past the initial pushback and objections from your prospect and move them into a sales conver- sation in Chapters 15, 16, and 18. Build Familiarity Our data and data that we’ve gathered and analyzed from a diverse set of sources indicate that it takes, on average: ■ 1 to 3 touches to reengage an inactive customer ■ 1 to 5 touches to engage a prospect who is in the buying window and is familiar with you and your brand ■ 3 to 10 touches to engage a prospect who has a high degree of familiarity with you or your brand, but is not in the buying window ■ 5 to 12 touches to engage a warm inbound lead ■ 5 to 20 touches to engage a prospect who has some familiarity with you and your brand—buying window dependent ■ 20 to 50 touches to engage a cold prospect who does not know you or your brand These are general averages. Depending on your overall brand recognition, geographic location, prospecting channel, product, service, sales cycle, and industry vertical, you may find that these numbers shift in or out of your favor. The point, however, is not the numbers. It is the story these numbers tell us. Familiarity plays an important role in getting The Four Objectives of Prospecting 81 prospects to engage. The more familiar a prospect is with you, your brand, and/or your company, the more likely they will be willing to accept and return your calls, reply to your e-mails, accept a social media connection request, respond to a text message, and engage when you are prospecting in person. We’re going to do a much deeper dive into the Law of Familiarity in Chapter 12. Building familiarity is almost always a secondary or tertiary objective of a prospecting touch, though at times, especially with strategic prospecting campaigns, it may be your primary objective. Familiarity as a prospecting objective requires a long-term focus because it is improved through the cumulative impact of ongoing prospecting activity. This is why savvy sales professionals create strategic prospecting campaigns (SPCs) that cross-leverage prospect- ing channels to systematically build familiarity. For example, let’s say you have done some research and uncovered the contact names of 100 manufacturing operations managers—the most likely decision makers for your service. Prob- lem is, they don’t know you and you don’t know them. Many of them may have no familiarity with your company. In this scenario, it may take multiple touches over a long period of time to get one of these potential buyers to engage. To gain their attention you might develop an SPC that includes phone calls and voice mails, e-mail, social, targeted trade shows, and industry conferences. Your primary objective is to create enough familiarity that these cold prospects are more likely to engage. ■ Each time you leave a voice mail, they hear your name and your company name and their familiarity with you increases. ■ Each time you send an e-mail, they read your name and see your e-mail address, company name, and service brand, and their familiarity with you increases. ■ When you connect with them on LinkedIn, familiarity increases. ■ When you like, comment on, or share something they post on a social media channel, familiarity increases. 82 Fanatical Prospecting ■ When you meet them at an industry conference and put a face with a name, familiarity increases. The bottom line is, if you don’t have a plan and you don’t know your objectives, your prospecting blocks will be far less effective and you will waste time. However, when you build more effective prospecting lists, with clear objectives, centered on specific pros- pecting channels, your prospecting blocks are easier, faster, more impactful, and generate far better results. The Four Objectives of Prospecting 83