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Some producers think that qualified prospects are scarce. In fact, you've been taught to think this way in your sales training:
"The sale starts when the prospect says no."
"It takes 6 contacts before you can expect to make a sale."
"You've got to find out the real objection before you can close."
These tactics of selling make selling difficult, waste your time and give any sales profession a bad name. In fact, this ineffective paradigm of selling (which often hides under the guise of persistency) is based on a false premise. You have lived your entire career with a premise that qualified prospects are scarce. It may be hard to see that you live with this notion. But if you've gone back again and again to the same prospect after they have said no many times, you have been gripped by the false paradigm that qualified prospects are scarce. Isn't it true that if you believed good prospects were plentiful, you would have just moved on to the next prospect and not wasted your time?
But you've been taught to be persistent (obnoxious from the prospect's perspective) and you believe such persistency is a good thing! But doesn't this make you weary? And isn't it a huge waste of your time?
So you've gotten tired of selling, you believe that prospects are difficult, you've even sacrificed your integrity at times because you just wanted to make a sale even if someone was only marginally inclined to do business. You went home tired at the end of the day.
It doesn't need to be this way and the professional, successful financial services sales people do not do business this way. They have one very different belief. They believe that qualified prospects are abundant!
Please think a minute about some big producers you know. Don't they act like everyone is a good prospect? And doesn't the universe make their belief come true by continuing to deliver high quality prospects to them? It may seem like they have the magic touch, but it's not magic. These successful producers simply have a belief that's consistent with reality. Good prospects are all over the place!
So the successful producer does not grind on a prospect or return with the same story. Sure, they may ask a prospect why the prospect says "no." But they ask not to grind the prospect, but to make sure that their own communication has been complete and that they have understood all of the prospect's concerns. When they see clearly that the prospect is not interested, they shake hands and say "good bye."
If you want to reach higher levels of production and enjoy your work more, just move on when you do not have an interested prospect. Better yet, make sure that your prospecting system only generates appointments with interested and qualified people.
I'll explain this in greater detail next month, but here's the comparison of two prospecting systems. One produces good quality prospects, the other produces people who make you tired.
If you cold call for appointments, you are generating low quality prospects because in many instances, you are convincing the prospect to see you. You may be "twisting his arm" to some degree to get the appointment. Is it any wonder that 30% of the time, the prospect is not home when they agreed or they are not interested?
What would happen if instead, you placed an advertisement offering a free booklet about a particular topic in which you had expertise. Those people that called from the advertisement for that booklet would be self-motivated. That's the type of prospect you want--people who take initiative and take action.
See the difference in how your prospecting system determines the type of prospects you develop?
Next month, I'll discuss prospecting systems that produce high quality, interested, qualified prospects. But for now, know that qualified, interested prospects are abundant and move on when someone is not interested.
, well-known insurance companies.
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