Prospecting Without Emotion

B2B sales is tough. Salespeople tell me that the biggest hurdle isn’t the conversation or the close, and it’s surely not the service. They say the challenge is literally scheduling that initial appointment. Makes sense- in the world of business-to-business sales, our prospects often are actually paying other people to keep us at bay, but the real problem lies within ourselves.

Human nature is to complicate things- especially things that we don’t enjoy. It can be daunting to accept that our cold calling purpose initially is simply to interrupt someone’s day and change their priorities- nothing more, nothing less. 

Here’s the silver lining: there are only three possible outcomes:

• The prospect is unavailable.
• The prospect speaks to you and declines an appointment for now.
• The prospect schedules an appointment.

That’s it! Notice there is nothing included about feelings? That’s because they are detrimental to the process and should be left out. Whether or not the gatekeeper laughs at your joke or the decision maker scowls is irrelevant to your next approach or dial.

When a call goes exceptionally well or terribly wrong, take a moment to reflect. However, for the standard ones, don’t get stuck overanalyzing. Just move on to the next.

Tips to stay grounded:

Know your team’s and/or industry’s expected stats and how you measure up. If you are on par, keep pushing forward.

Cold call with a teammate for morale- it gives you an opportunity to celebrate the wins and laugh off the mishaps.

Set your daily activity goals as just that- activity goals. When we set appointment goals for the day it is easy to stop when we are “in the zone”. This limits great days to merely good ones.

Prospecting is the core of building your client base and shouldn’t be daunting. Remember, your goal is to interrupt someone’s day to change their priorities BUT ultimately to solve a problem for them- it’s as simple as that. We’re capable of tackling simple hard tasks. It’s the emotional clutter we allow that makes it seem overwhelming.

By keeping simplicity top of mind and emotions in check, we can navigate cold calling with confidence and success- you’ve got this!