Prospecting is all about tiny, incremental changes over time. That helps you improve your skills, so you can truly know if a prospecting activity makes sense in your world or not.
But if you don't continually make tiny changes and adjustments to your approach, then you'll continue to fail!
That can be easy to forget, even for those of us involved in Sandler. One of my counterparts who runs another Sandler office knew that I had success in a specific industry, so he called me for some advice.
He had joined an association whose members were all in that industry. He shared that he had gotten the directory and cold called every single organization in the directory. That was about 200 members!
I asked him, "So how did it go?"
He sighed. "Every single one of them was busy."
I literally took a step back, not expecting that answer. A bit concerned, I asked him, "So when did you change your approach?"
"Uh…"
Even though he was teaching it to his clients, he'd forgotten to apply those incremental changes in his own world!
As he'd cold called the members, he had talked to about 100 people. So fortunately, he still had connections he hadn't made yet from the directory list.
I knew enough about the industry to know that there was some seasonality to it. While they were all busy now, most of them wouldn't be later in the year.
I suggested, "Why don't you change your approach to something like this: 'We work with people who are busy right now but would like to be busy all year round.'"
Wouldn't you know it, the next ten calls where he actually talked to people, he had real conversations! By making that tiny change in his approach, he made a big difference in the outcome.
Crandall is the Principal of Sandler in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He works with business owners and motivated individuals to create and implement Professional Development Strategies to foster the growth of individuals, teams, and organizations.
