One Friday afternoon about 20 years ago, I had frantically pulled into my hotel in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore and was in a rush. I was meeting Michael, one of our technology partners, outside of Camden Yards for an Orioles game in an hour and wanted to get in a workout before then. I booked it to my room, changed into workout clothes and knocked out a quick 20-minute workout before showering and making it to the game without a second to spare. My workout was probably one-third of what I wanted it to be, but I had no choice. It was 20 minutes or nothing.
When I shared this with Michael during some small talk, he made a statement that has grown in relevance every year since: “You don’t realize how important that 20-minute workout was. The difference between that and doing nothing is exponential. Doing something – anything – is so important.”
He was right. If I did nothing, my heart and lungs wouldn’t have been stimulated that day, my joints and tendons would’ve stayed tight between riding in a car and sitting at a game, and most importantly my spirit would’ve been cracked. These are tiny effects, but day after day, they add up to an important outcome.
This lesson brings me to a plan that I have for your prospecting efforts. If you’re like most salespeople in the low voltage space, then you either prospect sporadically when you have a few hours or you don’t do any prospecting. In today’s marketplace, a salesperson can survive without prospecting, but if you add outbound prospecting to your routine, you can thrive. But how do you find the time?
That’s easy…
Make one call, and only call, per workday. I won’t get into what to do on this post – there are a million pieces of advice on that throughout this blog. All I want you to do is identify 30 or less accounts that you want to penetrate, and touch one every day. If you have some spare time, find something else to do. Only do one a day, but do it every single day. You can do this by phone, email, in person, write a letter, send a LinkedIn direct message or whatever. Try two methods like a voicemail followed by an email. Whatever – just do it. One a day, every day for the rest of your career. If someone becomes a customer or tells you to stop calling them, remove them from your list and add a replacement.
One exception: if you are already prospecting in a successful manner, keep doing what you’re doing. This advice is for the other 99% that are struggling to find the time.
