The Presidential Election and Sales Prospecting

I have some slightly bad news for you regarding the upcoming election in November:

No matter who wins the 2016 presidential election, unless your phone is ringing off the hook or you’re up to your ears in referrals, you are still going to need to be proactive and reach out to prospects by phone or in person.

You can’t control the weather. (See Hurricane Sandy!)

You can’t control the election. (Unless you’re a mega donor!)

You can’t control other companies. (Companies merge and get acquired all the time.)

You can’t control other executives. (Executives change jobs or get fired.)

Mark Cuban said best: “The only thing any entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their effort.”

(He’s the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a billionaire by the way!)

I came across an article from by Dave Kurlan recently. Here’s his key points verbatim:

“Cold calling isn’t enjoyable (for those salespeople who are truthful about it). Cold calling isn’t effective except for the most brilliant of callers. Cold calling isn’t efficient anymore.  One thing that cold calling will always be is controllable and manageable.

You can’t control the number of inbound leads your salespeople will get.  Of course, if you are generating more leads than necessary to keep the pipeline full of quality opportunities my argument doesn’t work.  But most companies aren’t accomplishing that – yet.  

You can’t control the number of introductions you will receive from your clients and customers.

You can’t control the number of introductions your social network will make on your behalf, even if you are asking for them.

You can control the number of cold calls your salespeople make.  Even if the numbers are as ugly as this:

Attempts – 100
Connects –   10
Meeting Scheduled – 1

At least you can control that.

I don’t think cold calling should still be the default approach for new business development. However, if a salesperson needs to add 20 new opportunities to their pipeline each month, and the other methods deliver only 7, then cold calling becomes a necessary method to secure the remaining 13 opportunities required.”

True that!

Happy sales prospecting!