Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide for Starting Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, E-Mail, and Cold Calling
| Informative | 8.5 |
|---|---|
| Helpful | 8.5 |
| Easy to Read | 9 |
| Value for money | 8.3 |
There are too many distractions today that impact sales productivity. Sales reps need to work smarter to get more done in less time.
Who Should Read This
Busy reps struggling to balance between sales and non-sales tasks.
Description
Review
Key Take-aways
- Knowing that activity takes 90+ days to pay off, successful salespeople relentlessly fill their pipeline through a mixture of telephone, in-person, e-mail, social selling, text messaging, referrals, networking, inbound leads, trade shows, and cold calling.
- Here is the brutal truth: Salespeople who ignore the phone fail.”
- “Top performers organize their day into distinct time blocks dedicated to specific activities, concentrating their focus and eliminating distractions within those blocks… We schedule our prospecting blocks [on our calendars] into three “Power Hours” that are spread across the day—morning, midday, and afternoon.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “The bottom line is people don’t want to be pitched or “sold” on social media. They prefer to connect, interact, and learn. For this reason, the social channel is better suited to building familiarity, lead nurturing, research, nuanced inbound prospecting, and trigger-event awareness.”
- “Prospects meet with you for their reasons, not yours. You must articulate the value of spending time with you in the context of what is most important to them. Your message must demonstrate a sincere interest in listening to them, learning about them, and solving their unique problems.”
- “Just saying, “I’d like 15 minutes of your time because I want to learn more about you and your company” works surprisingly well with many prospects.”
- “When salespeople ask me when they should leave a voice mail, I always answer, “When it matters.”… Keep voice mail messages to 30 seconds.”
- “Timing Teleprospecting Calls Is a Losing Strategy… So, forget about timing your calls and commit instead to a daily, first-thing-in-the-morning call block.”
- “The feeling of rejection happens the moment you get a reflex response, brush-off, or objection (RBO)… Overcoming doesn’t work. There is a universal law of human behavior: You cannot argue another person into believing that they are wrong. The more you push another person, the more they dig their heels in and resist you… There is a better way. Rather than attempting to overcome—defeating or prevailing over your prospect—you should disrupt their expectations and thought patterns when they push back with a no. The key is a disruptive statement or question that turns them around so that they lean toward you rather than move away from away from you… When they say they’re busy, instead of arguing them into how you will only take a little bit of their time, say, “I figured you would be.” Agreeing with them disrupts their thought pattern… When they say, “Just send me some information,” say, “Tell me specifically what you are looking for.” This calls their bluff and forces engagement… When they say, “I’m not interested,” say, “That makes sense. Most people aren’t.” Their brain isn’t ready for you to agree with them… One phrase you want to avoid is “I understand.” When you use the phrase “I understand,” you sound just like every other schmuck who uses this phrase as insincere filler so they can get back to pitching. It demonstrates zero empathy and tells your prospect that you are not listening and don’t care.”
- The salespeople-help-salespeople hack is an awesome secret weapon.”
- “Truly effective salespeople understand that it is all about asking the prospect the right questions and demonstrating that you can help them solve a particular problem or issue.”
- Don’t send bulk e-mail. Prospecting e-mail is one to one. It is one e-mail from your address sent to one individual, one e-mail at a time… Avoid attaching images… Avoid hyperlinks… never use “Hi” or “Hello” or “Dear” or any other salutation in front of your prospect’s name. No one in business does that except salespeople. “Hi __” is a complete turnoff for prospects.”
Why this book
In my entire career, I’d never faced a sales problem of this magnitude.”
Sound familiar? If so, you’re probably an overwhelmed seller. Your clients expect more, with faster turnarounds. Your quota keeps going up. You need to leverage social media, keep up-to-date on your industry, figure out how to sell new products and services, and learn all the latest technologies. The demands are never-ending. You could work nonstop around the clock and still not get it all done. It’s a huge problem faced by experienced sales pros, busy entrepreneurs, and sales rookies. If you don’t stay on top of your time, it’s tough to make your numbers, let alone blow them away.
Konrath, a globally recognized sales consultant and speaker, knew she needed help, but found that advice aimed at typical workers didn’t work for her—or for others who needed to sell for a living. Salespeople need their own productivity guidelines adapted to the fast-paced, always-on sales world. So Konrath experimented relentlessly to discover the best time-savers and sales hacks in order to deliver the first productivity guide specifically for sales success.
In More Sales, Less Time, Konrath blends cutting-edge behavioral research with her own deep knowledge of sales to teach you how to succeed in this age of distraction. You’ll discover how to:
• Reclaim a minimum of one hour per day by eliminating major time sucks and changing the way you tackle e-mail and social media.
• Free up time to focus on activities that have the highest impact on your sales results, such as preparing, researching, strategizing, and connecting with customers.
• Optimize your sales processes to eliminate redundancies and wasted time.
• Transform your mind-set to effortlessly incorporate new, more productive habits; leverage your best brainpower; and stay at the top of your sales game.
Konrath helps you develop strategies specifically tailored to your life in sales, using your strengths to cut through the feeling of being overwhelmed. All salespeople have the same number of hours in a day; it’s up to you to rescue your time to sell smarter.
Editorial Review
“More Sales, Less Time delivers exactly what salespeople need in this high-speed, high-demand age: research-tested strategies for time management tailored to the special needs of sales work. This book is definitely worth your time.”
—DANIEL H. PINK, author of To Sell Is Human
“Jill Konrath understands it’s not about selling more by doing more—it’s about selling more by doing less. In this book, she provides practical guidance to help sellers slow down, evaluate trade-offs, and make the hard choices necessary to focus only on those things that matter most.”
—BRENT ADAMSON, principal executive advisor at CEB and coauthor of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer
“We inundate our sales teams with new technologies all the time, hoping that at least one of them will enable our sellers to make quota. Imagine what would happen if we gave people a real silver bullet—more time. That’s exactly what Jill Konrath offers in her new book. She lays out the tools and tactics salespeople can use to do more in a day and achieve their goals.”
—TRISH BERTUZZI, author of The Sales Development Playbook and president and chief strategist of The Bridge Group
“As a salesperson, your biggest asset is your time. Use it right and you’ll make President’s Club, with time left over for family and self. More Sales, Less Time shows sales reps how to weed out time sucks, focus on what really counts, and turn the digital age into a productivity asset. Read it and multiply your value!”
—TIM SANDERS, author of Dealstorming
“Tired of being crazy-busy? Jill Konrath’s got great advice for managing distractions and focusing on what matters most, so you can do more and feel better about how you work.”
—LAURA VANDERKAM, author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast
“More Sales, Less Time is filled with innovative strategies and challenging experiments to help you achieve your maximum productivity potential. Try some—you’ll sell better, faster.”
—MARK ROBERGE, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, former HubSpot CRO, and author of The Sales Acceleration Formula
More about the author
Martyn R. LewisReviews (0)
User Reviews
Be the first to review “Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide for Starting Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, E-Mail, and Cold Calling”
You must be logged in to post a review.
There are no reviews yet.