| Selling is fun. Or at least it should be. Winning the deal, working
with people, being on the front lines and clued into what’s
really happening out in the field—it’s fun. Selling is a great
profession.
In any profession, however, there are parts of the job that
people like the most and parts they like the least. In software
development, the most dreaded chore is documentation. In
engineering, it’s detail-drawing specifications. In finance, it’s
the drudgery of the numbers.
The thing most salespeople like least about their profession
is prospecting. In fact, many salespeople hate it. Finding
new leads, cold calling, getting prospects into the sales
pipeline, ramping up the sales funnel—yikes! Most salespeople
know what to do with a prospect once he or she has been
found and qualified, but getting and pursuing those leads
...well, that’s a chore they’d rather avoid.
There is a difference between salespeople who are good at
prospecting—sometimes called rainmakers—and those who
aren’t. The difference is not something you’d suspect. It’s that
the ones who do it well consider prospecting an art and not a
science. |
