7 Golden Insight From Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount

Ever wondered why prospecting is hard for you? You wake up each day, excited to go to work, but the mere thought of prospecting sends shivers down your spine? You’ve probably also heard of fanatical prospecting, but you just don’t have the grit for it?

Good news! There is an answer to your problems. A secret to crushing your targets and have you smiling home with that robust commission check.

The book Fanatical Prospecting consists of 20 chapters in 304 pages. Reducing the bulk to a 10-minutes read with 7 Golden insights to spice up your prospecting game and help you crush your goals is what we call “a golden key on a silver platter.” You don’t get that every day.

The 7 Golden insights/lessons from Fanatical Prospecting are as follows:

Posses a fanatical mindset when prospecting
Your pipeline is your lifeline
Time is money; make it count.
Use your CRM like a CEO
Gatekeepers are access grantors
Rejection is not a death sentence
The telephone is your most powerful tool

Lesson 1: Possess a fanatical mindset when prospecting.

Just like a fanatic, be filled with excessive and single-minded zeal to succeed in prospecting. Stop at nothing to convert your prospects into buyers. In the book Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb Blount explains the importance of being fanatical in generating sales leads. He describes the fanatical prospectors as the superstars:

Superstars are relentless, unstoppable prospectors. They are obsessive about keeping their pipeline full of qualified prospects. They prospect anywhere and anytime — constantly turning over rocks and looking for their next opportunity. They prospect day and night — unstoppable and always on. Fanatical!
Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb Blount

Every salesperson is burdened with the problems of prospecting, but the Superstars break the jinx and take the bull by the horn- Prospect day and night, fill up their pipelines with quality prospects, crush their target year in, year out, cancel excuses like “no one wants to buy from me” and turns it to “How many more orders do you want?”

Superstars view prospecting as a way of life. They prospect with single-minded focus, worrying little about what other people think of them. They enthusiastically dive into telephone prospecting, email prospecting, cold calling, networking, asking for referrals, knocking on doors, following up on leads, attending trade shows, and striking up conversations with strangers.
Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb Blount

No need to reinvent the wheel. Study the pattern of other superstars, duplicate their mindset, and you can claim their success stories.

Duplicate the following fanatical mindsets:

Be optimistic and enthusiastic
Be competitive: have a desire to win
Be confident: believe that you are born to win
Be relentless: never stop believing
Be thirsty for knowledge: welcome feedback and coaching, invest in yourself by reading, listening to podcasts, attending seminars, etc
Be systemic and efficient: near-robotic and systematic efficiency
Be Adaptive and flexible: situational awareness

That said, you have to be intentional about prospecting to be a Superstar. Every other step depends on your willingness to be fanatical.

How do you want to earn the bonuses of fanatical prospecting without being fanatical? It’s like wanting to graduate from school without being a student or passing exams. Impossible. Do you want to win your prospecting game? It’s simple. Be passionate about winning, and you will be a winner.

Lesson 2: Your pipeline is your lifeline

Yes! Really. In prospecting, you fill up your pipeline to save your sales life. As the bloodstream is to a human, so is the pipeline to a prospector. Do you stop eating because you have enough blood in your system? No, right? Then keep prospecting. Even when you’ve exceeded your target, prospect to replace possible fallouts and save your butt on rainy days.

In the book Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb emphasized a lot on the “30-day rule”. The 30-Day Rule is almost, if not always in play, in B2B and high-end B2C sales. In short-cycle transactional sales, the 30-Day Rule may become the “One-Week Rule” or even the “3-Days Rule” as the case may be, however the idea is similar.

The 30-Day Rule implies that the prospecting you do in that period will pay off for the next 90 days.

Always bear in mind that prospecting is a game of numbers, and any day you don’t prospect, you have to double your numbers to cover up for the days you missed.

The secret of being a Superstar lies in the number of prospects you can convert to real-time buyers, and eventually, customers. So, how do you want to make sales without prospecting? Impossible, right?

Interrupt your prospect’s busy schedules to sell yourself and close a deal. You know that this pipeline is important to you; it is the only criteria for you to win your targets and crush your goals. The only reason you will go home with that paycheck at the end of the month. So you don’t ever stop.

Your pipeline is your lifeline; keep it filled.

Lesson 3: Time is money; make it count.

We don’t mean to sound cliche, but…

Are you making effective use of your resources? Are you making every day count? If your answer is “No”, then you have to step up. In prospecting, every day wasted comes back to haunt you. Always remember the 30-Day Rule.

Jeb laid emphasis on how you need to quickly grab someone’s attention and give them a compelling reason to hear you out. He mentioned the importance of keeping the “Three B’s” at the back of your mind; Be brief, Be bright, Be gone. Most times, you will have to interrupt your prospect’s busy schedule to close a deal. Always have these in mind before making a sales call.

For time management, Jeb talks about the “3 P’s that could be holding you back,”; Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Paralysis from the analysis.

Procrastination– “the grave where opportunities are buried”. It makes you lose that prospect or that golden opportunity simply because of “I’ll call them later”.

Perfectionism– Do not waste time on rehearsals, trying to make a perfect call to that prospect. You want to check through their bio, go through their financial records, be sure they are financially buoyant before you make that sales offer, forgetting you have competition, who will gladly take the step and make that money.

Little wonder, Late Zig Ziggler said: “what is worth doing is worth doing poorly”. Waiting to be perfect takes time and inadvertently makes you lose money. The question of “to cold call or not to cold call?” will always come to your mind. Don’t waste your time asking questions, pick up the phone, and make the call already.

And just in case you are lost on how to go about that cold call and save time, you can take a look at what we call the “two-by-two rule” It always works.

Lesson 4: Use your CRM like a CEO.

This right here is how you prove yourself as a fanatical prospector. One of the benefits of fanatical prospecting is that your database will be filled with quality prospects. And when that happens, you will always have a lot of options to fall back on when the chips are high.

In addition to that, knowing your database is key! Repeat that.

Done?

Great! Now, there is the peace that comes with having quality prospects – those prospects that can be converted to buyers. And you can only attain that by putting down every detail concerning a prospect, in your CRM. Don’t miss out on any detail; it could cost you a great deal. You can check out these tips on how to improve your CRM.

Knowing your database will help you reach out to your prospects, and a proper follow-up will help you build your sales funnel; that is how you generate leads and nurture prospects through the sales process.

Now that you know this, we are certain you desperately want to close sales and crush your targets without troubles.

Want to know the secret? Be persistent and consistent. Sell yourself to your prospects, connect with them on social media. You have to be in their faces for them to know you. Get familiar with your prospect.

People are more comfortable doing business with people, businesses, or brands that they know.

Lesson 5: The telephone is your most powerful tool

The phone takes you to places you haven’t been to before. You can make a call from one continent to the other. Asides from saving you the cost of traveling, it also saves time, which is the most important factor in prospecting and business as a whole.

The many hours it will take you to meet, one after another, every prospect, in person, would be saved by just a few hours of phone calls. Over 70% of the contacts you make prospecting are going to exchange phone numbers with you.

That said, As a prospector, you would be doing a lot of cold calling. Here are some Cold calling techniques we believe can get you up and running.

However, there should be a mixture of telephone, in-person, email, social selling, text messaging, inbound leads, trade shows, referrals, networking, etc.

Lesson 6: Gatekeepers are access to grantors.

No one enters a room without going through the door. Gatekeeper here is similar to a receptionist who is responsible for creating schedules, appointments, and responding to general phone calls on behalf of the business. Don’t try to get past him or her – it doesn’t always end well.

You need to sell yourself to him or her, then give them some time to sell you to the boss. Start by explaining what you’re offering and promise to call back in a week or so.

Make friends with the gatekeepers, treat them professionally and with respect. Hopefully, you’ll gain their cooperation. You’d be surprised to see how far they can go to lessen the bulk of your work and help you close sales even faster.

Lesson 7: Rejection is not a death sentence

In Fanatical Prospecting, Jeb talks about the importance of rolling off rejection. He explains that rejection from your prospects could make you think that the situation is beyond your control and you’re helpless, but you have to “roll-it-off.”

As a salesperson, you will be doing a lot of interrupting to talk to your prospect, and those prospects are busy. A rebuff could be the only resort to get you off their neck. To be on the safer side,

Instead of dwelling on why you keep getting rebuffs and rejections, check and evaluate yourself for mental blocks that could keep you from closing sales. First things first.

Always remember…

It’s natural to want to put the blame on the management, the economy, and every other person except for yourself. I mean, you’re just being human. But dwelling on those blames will do you no good.

“Prospecting is a Contact Sport,” and to be effective, you’ve got to know what you want and go for it. To get results, you have to gather as many leads as possible in your prospecting block. Reduce the time you spend on small talks, unproductive chitchats and on long-winded scripts.

There is no sugarcoating it. Prospecting sucks! And that is why a lot of salespeople don’t do it. They would rather spend time looking for ways to “sail to a ship without leaving the harbor.” Sounds like magic, but maybe it works for them. Only their paychecks don’t sail.

Remember that an empty pipeline can be anemic. You don’t want that, do you?

Worried?

You need not. We understand how time consuming prospecting can be, and that’s why we came up with SalesFinder.io. To help you build targeted lead lists without having to scrape websites and Linkedin, and save you the stress of rigorous prospecting.

Think fanatical prospecting? Think SalesFinder.