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Fanatical Prospecting — Chapter-07: The Three Ps That Are Holding You Back
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7 The Three Ps That Are Holding You Back Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. —Francis of Assisi There are three mindsets that hold salespeople back from prospect- ing: procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis from analysis. Procrastination You’ve no doubt heard the children’s riddle, “What is the best way to eat an elephant?” The answer, of course, is, “One bite at a time.” It’s a simple concept. But when it comes to the real world and real problems, not that easy. 41
Far too often we try to eat the elephants in our lives all in one bite, which results in stress, frustration, and ultimately failure. You can’t do all of your prospecting for the month in one day. It is impossible and it will never get done. Yet salespeople put prospecting off—always with the promise that they’ll “get around to it” tomorrow or later this week or Monday or whatever the prevailing excuse of the day is. They delude themselves into believing that they can prospect once or twice a week and it will be okay. But I know the real truth, and so do you. It never works out like that. Procrastination is an ugly disease that plagues the human race. No one is immune. You’ve got it and I’ve got it. In fact, I have a PhD in procrastination—a bona fide expert. One year I bought a book called How to Stop Procrastinating (my New Year’s resolution). That book sat unread on my bedside table for three years until I finally sold it at a garage sale. Every major failure in my life has been a direct result of a collapse in my self-discipline to do the little things every day. Frankly, that is all failure really is. The cumulative impact of many poor decisions, slips in self-disciplines, and things put off until it is too late. To add insult to injury, my failures were often accompa- nied by an embarrassing crescendo of desperate, hurried, and wasted activity trying to catch up and do it all at once, to save my hide. It is in our nature as humans to procrastinate. It is normal and easy. It’s easy to say, “Oh, I’m tired, I’ll exercise tomorrow.” It’s easy to say, “I’ll start my diet tomorrow, I’ll quit smoking after this pack, I’ll make up today’s prospecting on Friday, I’ll start reading that book next week!” It’s in our nature to fool ourselves with these promises. But there is no reward for procrastination. The failure to do the little things every day will cripple your efforts to achieve your goals. Lack of discipline will slowly but surely tug at your success and will eventually steal it away. 42 Fanatical Prospecting
To be a fanatical prospector, you must develop the self-disci- pline to do a little bit of prospecting each day. You can’t wait until the end of the year or even the end of the month to prospect. You have to prospect every day. Procrastinating is easy, but the cost is great. Many salespeople don’t understand the price they have paid until they wake up one day and realize that they are facing down the Universal Law of Need with an empty pipe and an angry sales manager while sitting on top of a big pile of “shoulda-dones,” regret, and failure. As the saying goes: “Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.” Perfectionism I looked on as Jeremy arranged his desk perfectly. Organized his computer. Made sure that he had his script just right. He carefully researched each prospect on his list. Google search, LinkedIn search, company website search, and reviewed in detail the history and call notes in the CRM. An hour went by. Then two. Finally he made the first call—a call to a prospect on which he had done meticulous research. His call went to voice mail, as did the next call, and the next one. He sighed, “No one answers the phone these days.” After three calls he stopped to arrange things on his desk just so. Twenty minutes later he packed up his things and headed out into the field to visit customers he was already doing business with. In Jeremy’s quest for perfectionism, he managed to make seven prospecting calls in about three hours, getting nothing in return for his effort. Valarie has an office right next door to Jeremy. As soon as she sat down at her desk that same morning, she ran a list on her CRM and started dialing. An hour later she’d made 53 calls, spoken to 14 decision makers, and set two appointments with qualified prospects. The Three Ps That Are Holding You Back 43
Then she sent 39 prospecting e-mails. It wasn’t perfect. She ran into a few snags and had a couple of calls that would have gone better had she researched in advance. However, she accomplished far more than Jeremy. Valarie was also earning more than Jeremy—almost $100,000 more in commissions—and was the number one–ranked sales rep in her division. In her Huffington Post article, “14 Signs Your Perfectionism Has Gotten Out of Control,” Carolyn Gregoire writes, “The great irony of perfectionism is that while it’s characterized by an intense drive to succeed, it can be the very thing that prevents success. Perfectionism is highly correlated with fear of failure (which is generally not the best motivator) and self-defeating behavior, such as excessive procrastination.”1 This statement describes perfectly why perfectionism is the arch enemy of fanatical prospecting. It generates both procrastination and the fear of rejection (failure). The late, great Zig Ziglar said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” I’ve always believed that messy success is far better than perfect mediocrity. I’ll beat the rep that spends a call block meticulously researching each prospect on any day by just picking up a targeted list and calling. Sure, I’ll miss a few things here and there if I don’t read every note in the CRM, but there won’t be enough of a delta to compensate for the activity gap between me and the rep who gets everything perfect before making a single prospecting call. To be clear, I am not saying that researching or organizing your prospecting block is a bad idea. If you are calling C-level prospects, or you sell a complex and expensive product, it is a good idea to research your prospect in advance so that your message is relevant to their unique situation. Advance is the optimal word, though. Do research before and after the Golden Hours so that it does not encroach on your prospecting block. However, when perfect research, perfect organization, or find- ing the perfect time to call becomes an obsession that you use to 44 Fanatical Prospecting
shield yourself from potential rejection, or if you delude yourself into believing that you are working when you are accomplishing nothing, you’ve got to get control of it. Most of the problem with perfectionism is self-talk. The voice inside your head telling you that when you get all of your little ducks in a perfect row, prospects will be putty in your hands. This self-talk manifests itself in behaviors that tend to have you working hard getting everything ready and perfect, but not actually doing anything. Paralysis from Analysis Call reluctance is a common label that gets slapped on salespeople who fail to prospect. The term conjures up the image of a salesperson staring at the phone or at their prospect’s front door—knees shaking, palms sweating, drenched in anxiety, unwilling to take the next step. Call reluctance is an easy label to apply because it seems to cover all sales sins. But some people aren’t reluctant—they are just in the wrong job. If you are that person, so afraid to call that you can’t will your fingers to dial the phone or your feet to move, so afraid of calling on strangers that you find it hard to go to work or even get out of bed—quit. Go do something else. This book won’t help you. You don’t have call reluctance, you are doing something you hate, and trust me on this: Life is too short to spend doing something you hate. Another, more common reason for what appears to be call reluctance is paralysis from analysis. This problem is driven in part by perfectionism and is totally fixable. Here is what analysis paralysis sounds like emanating from the mouth of a salesperson: “Well, what if they say no?” “What if they say this or that?” “How will I know if . . . ?” “What should I do if . . . ?” The Three Ps That Are Holding You Back 45
Rather than just dialing the phone, sending the e-mail, or walking in the door and dealing with what comes next, the rep goes on a “what if” binge, often followed by an attempt to get every duck in a perfect row. Disrupting the 3Ps When I’m working with salespeople who are being held back by all or one of the 3Ps, 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 too. 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 is required to break this destructive cycle. It’s not much different from how I learned to swim. I was six and shivering. My toes hung precariously off the edge of the diving board that jutted out over the lake at Athens Y Camp in north Georgia. The hulking, six-foot-five frame of Coach Poss, the waterfront director, towered over me. We’d spent that last five days learning strokes, how to kick, and how to breathe, all in the safety of the shallow end. Now it was the moment of truth. Each student had to jump from the diving board into the dark, cold, deep lake and swim the 10 feet or so to shore. It seemed like a mile to me. I looked back at Coach Poss. “What if I can’t swim? What if I don’t come back up?” I pleaded. I stood on the end of that diving board staring at the water, running all of the worst-case scenarios over in my head. 46 Fanatical Prospecting
Coach Poss began walking toward me. He was neither amused nor swayed by my pleading. There was only one thing I feared more than jumping into the lake, and he was getting closer by the second. He’d already unceremoniously hurled a couple of reluctant begin- ner swimmers from the diving board. I did not want that embarrass- ment, so I jumped. I hit the cold water and went under. For a moment I panicked. Then I stroked my arms and kicked my feet and burst through the surface. I remembered my lessons and paddled my way to the shore. The strokes were not perfect—more dog paddle than breast stroke—but I made it. I made it! After that, you couldn’t keep me off of that diving board. Coach Poss taught me to swim because he forced me to do it. He wasn’t worried. He knew I wouldn’t drown. We’ve all found ourselves in the crushing grip of the 3Ps. I observe salespeople endlessly obsessing and overthinking the poten- tial outcomes of prospecting calls almost every day of my profes- sional life. They convince themselves that they need to gather more facts, just need a little bit more training, or that the timing is not right. They squander time worrying about what ifs and look at me with puppy dog eyes pleading for more time to get it right before diving in. The human mind abhors the unknown. In its 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. It panics in the face of change and clings to the status quo. Then it begins to convince us that all kinds of awful, dire consequences are imminent. But at some point, you’ve got to do something. Some- times you just need a Coach Poss or a Coach Jeb to push you to take action. Regardless of your situation, the one thing you can be sure of is that allowing the 3Ps to stand in the way of prospecting extracts a high emotional and financial cost. The Three Ps That Are Holding You Back 47
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