Earlier this week while I was delivering a webinar, a thoughtful attendee asked: “With caller id and spam email folders, how can I keep from having my prospecting efforts ignored?” The conventional answer sounds something like “Stay persistent.” “Get creative.” or “Send the gate keeper a gift card.” Although persistence, creativity, and bribery are great strategies in most skills, I didn’t respond with anything close to these answers. My response?
“You can’t. Until they need you, they will ignore your calls, emails, visits, letters, social media messages, and text messages.”
Sound discouraging? If it was 2003, then I’d say yes, that’s discouraging. But it’s not 2003, and the objective of prospecting is no longer to get a response. Today, the primary goal of prospecting is to use these communication methods to educate your prospects until they realize that you’re a subject matter expert. Mail them articles, email links to videos, and drop off case studies. They won’t reply or call you back, but they’ll take your material, and they’ll start to rely on you for great content – whether they check it out or not. Little by little, piece by piece, you’ll be illustrating your competence and when they need an expert, you’ll get the call.
The challenge most salespeople have is that they receive no feedback, so they quit trying. Most of the success stories take eight or more touches. Should you do this forever? No. There is a point when you should remove them from your call list.
Tune in next week to learn when that is and what you should do.
