Can your salespeople pass this prospecting test?
January 4, 2010 by Ken DooleyPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter - Sales & Marketing, Latest News & Views - Sales & Marketing, Marketing & Sales Update, sales management, training
No matter what industry or type of company you’re in, there are ways to help your salespeople identify the root of their prospecting problems.
One great way: At your next sales meeting, give them this test devised by sales consultant Shannon Goodson.
Prospecting reluctance
Mark “yes” next to the sentences below that describe yourself.
- I probably spend more time planning to prospect than I devote to actually prospecting.
- I’m probably not really trying to prospect for new business as much as I could or should because I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle any more.
- I get uncomfortable when I have to phone someone I don’t know — and who isn’t expecting my call — to persuade them to buy something they may or may not need.
- I could initiate more contacts if I weren’t involved in so many other activities.
- I need time to “psych” myself up before I prospect.
- I spend a lot of time shuffling, planning, prioritizing and organizing the names on my prospect list before I actually put them to use.
- It’s very important to find innovative, alternative ways to prospect.
- I think that prospecting for new business probably takes more out of me emotionally than it does other salespeople.
- I have reasonably clear prospecting goals, but I spend more time talking about them than working towards them.
Interpreting your answers
Add up your “yes” responses. Now look below to see what your responses say about you.
- 1-2 “yes” answers indicate that you’re not experiencing any emotional difficulty prospecting.
- 3-4 indicates that you, like most salespeople, have low levels of prospecting reluctance. You may be able to decrease your reluctance even further by focusing even more on the prospecting techniques you’re most comfortable with.
- 5-6 — you have moderate levels of prospecting reluctance which probably keeps you from tapping the full potential of your market.
- 7-8 — the success you’ve had prospecting may be only a small glimmer of what it could be, or needs to be.
- 9 — you may have enough prospecting reluctance to stop a small sales force. You are not comfortable contacting any prospects.
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Tags: prospecting, Shanon Goodson, techniques
January 7th, 2010 at 2:23 am
Nice break down of 9 distinct problems. Most if not all seem like they can be overcome. Any suggestions for specific methods, tactics, etc. (more specific than “just do it”) for overcoming these 9 problems.
January 7th, 2010 at 10:18 am
I like the fact that you don’t have a zero score as one of the ways to interpret your score, (begins with 1-2). A perfect zero would mean you’re lying. Questions clearly address the preceived logical patterns which lead to procrastination. Organization is good, but spend a day getting prepared to spend the next 4 days making calls.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I believe that many salespeople lose their effectiveness through laziness! They find their job doesn’t challenge them enogh on a daily basis, so they lose their edge. Motivation is the key. Ongoing motivation & long-term planning & goal setting. Weekly meetings with a clear-cut agenda so they can follow through on short-term goals leading to the long-term greater picture. A manager who can follow up and challenge his team daily or weekly will be very effective.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
We first gave our sales people the book “The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance” and then sent a few of them to the three day course. In general, reluctance has 12 subsets and the company below can identify which subset you specifically have. Then, they give you a strategy for overcoming it.
Here’s their website: http://www.bsrpinc.com/
Good luck,
Todd
January 13th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
These are helpful questions, but they should be asked during the interview process. Each person is born with a personality trait referred to as “rejection sensitivity”, and each person has a different level of it. Training and experience can help overcome a physiological predisposition, but that takes a great deal of time and effort on the part of the sales manager. Using an effective personality test during the interview process can help sales managers avoid having to deal with these issues once the person has been hired. It really is true, good prospectors are born and not made. If it weren’t true, Prozac would never have been invented.
February 7th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
I agree with Dave. You need to identify these traits before you hire a new sales person. It is harder to transform somebody into a great salesperson with excellent prospecting skills than it is to just hire the right person.
Look at performance track records, ask very specific questions about goals they have exceeded and how they close sales, work their pipeline and prospect for new clients. This is very important for us in selecting new sales people at All-Tex Exteriors.
Robert Green
February 19th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I read the call reluctance book in 1980′s and I read it again when the newest 2007 edition came out. There are twelve kinds of call reluctance not nine. I can identify with Costello’s comment about laziness. It does seems that way but in the book I learned about salespeople called impostors that seem like they are call l reluctance but aren’t. They just take up our time and waste our money. You need to be able to find out who they are early on. Its convered int the same book. The researchers who did that book also make a test that can pick out call reluctant salespeople every other test I use misses. The scientists behind the book won’t agree with rejection sensitivity as a born trait. They put it clear when they wrote that nobody is born fearing telephones, door knobs, asking for referrals or trying to close sales. All that has to be learned from somebody else. They say salespeople actually catch call reluctance from each other and from managers too that they call call reluctance “carriers”.