Forget about closing. If you want to be successful in sales, I don't care whether you're selling
memberships million dollar pieces of equipment, large projects, you name it. It doesn't matter.
Closing is not where you want to focus your time. There's experts talking about nothing
but closing. Now, closing is important, but if you don't prospect effectively,
you'll have nothing to close. In fact, I'll go so far as to tell you that it's not about the ABCs
of selling. Always be closing. It's about the ABPs of sales and selling,
which is you should always be prospecting. So today I'm going to talk about the four
keys. You need to be a master or to at least become a master at prospecting
and make it part of your stable of tools to be successful in sales. Hey, make sure you hit that
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And if you hit the bell, you'll be notified anytime there's an update, a new video released,
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below. If you've got strategies that work well for you to build and retain that prospecting habit.
Hi, I'm Shawn Casemore and I've been selling stuff since I was 11. And what do we mean
by stuff? Well, I've sold everything from cars to memberships, to charity events, to
large pieces of equipment to widgets you name it, I've sold it. And the key that I found over
the years is that there are certain habits and practices that top sales performers use in order
to be successful. So about 20 years ago, it tells you how old I am. I started studying the habits of
top sales performers in order to identify what are those things that they do to be successful?
Prospecting is one of them. So today let's jump into the four keys that you'll need to
master prospecting and be the top of the class when it comes to selling in your organization.
All right. Now, if you can't tell, I'm fairly passionate about prospecting. In fact,
I think is one of the key skills that most sales professionals don't spend enough time on
in order to be successful. In fact, I'd suggest to you that one of the key reasons that most people
don't stay in a career in sales is because they don't really understand. Number one,
how important prospecting is number two, how to prospect effectively, and number three,
how to build the repeat habits that ensure that they are always prospecting. So
let's jump into the four keys to help you master being a prospector and your business. So
step number one. First thing you got to start with is being very clear on who your buyer is.
Now you might say, well, Sean, understanding who my buyers has, nothing to do with prospecting.
That is completely false. Here's why if I'm prospecting, let's run through a scenario here.
I'm probably making some outreach calls, sending some emails. I might be on LinkedIn or on social
media, looking at people in their titles, the businesses that they work in, reaching out and
sending messages later in the day, I might go for lunch with somebody and ask them for a referral
in the afternoon. I might have some meetings with clients. All of this requires that I know who I'm
looking for. If I'm going to prospect effectively, I have to be very clear on what's the title of the
individual I'm searching for. What's their role. What's important about their role.
What's important to them typically for somebody in their role, what industry or sector are they in?
Are there certain regions of the country that they're situated in that I should be
focused on? Right? All of these things help me to be very clear in who I'm looking for.
And that ensures that my prospecting is effective. And here's the key. If I try to
prospect and I'm not actually successful, meaning I'm talking to a lot of people,
but I'm just not converting them from prospect to customer. Then I'm going to give up,
I'm going to say those prospecting thing doesn't work for me. So that is why step one. I got to be
clear on who I'm going after, who is my buyer? Because being clear on that will ensure that I
have a greater chance of success of converting them from a buyer to a customer. All right.
Point number two is that you have to set targets. Now, what do we mean by targets?
Well, it's really breaking down the number of people that you need to connect with daily,
weekly, and monthly, but just as important. How much time are you going to invest in trying to
connect with these people? Here's why this is important. Malcolm Gladwell in his book, outliers
talks about the fact that it takes 10,000 hours of practice in something to become an expert. You
really want to be looking at the number of people you reach out to, but more importantly than the
amount of time you spend in prospecting to reach that expert level. So if you're spending four
hours a day, five days a week, that's 20 hours a week towards your 10,000 hours. So if you want
to become a real expert in prospecting, you need to set targets for yourself. Again, not just by
numbers of people you're going to reach out to, but the amount of time you're going to invest,
I often tell business owners and executives, you need to spend 40 or 50% of your time in sales.
If you're the top salesperson for the organization, if you're in sales, you're spending
hopefully a hundred percent of your time, but if you're getting pulled away into other duties,
account management duties, internal meetings, you need to go back and really set aside and
block out time for prospecting. So if you want to be an expert, set some targets and goals to
ensure you hit that 10,000 hour mark, all right. If you're enjoying these strategies around how to
be an expert in prospecting, make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can stay up to date on all
the new videos I release. There's at least one every week, as well as if you click on the bell,
you'll be notified when there's a comment and update or a new video
released love for you to make a comment below on what strategies work well for you to prospect.
And we can build this place as a place of best practices for prospecting experts. All right.
Point number three, to master prospecting, you have to become comfortable being uncomfortable.
Let me say that again. It sounds confusing. You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Let me give you an example. When I started selling cars, my early twenties, one of
the strategies I decided to use was to hand out flyers. Now I could walk around the neighborhood
of where I lived and put these flyers on people's windshields, but I decided to knock on doors. Now,
I don't know if you've ever done a lot of door knocking, but it's, uh, interesting to say the
least when it comes to sales. Now that said at first I was quite nervous. I didn't want to do
it. And people, some people are having dinner. They weren't very happy with me.
Some people said, leave me alone. Some people just, you know, look through the curtain at me,
wonder what I was doing. Some sort of weirdo knocking on their door.
The point is this, it was a little bit uncomfortable to start, but I knew
that I had to keep at it. If I really wanted to build a base of clients that would at least think
of me when it comes to buying a car. And what do you know? People started showing up carrying
this flyer. So that was really for me, an example of, well, it's an uncomfortable thing to do,
but it's necessary. And you know what? The more I did it, the more I became comfortable with
it. So if there's something you need to do or should be doing relative to prospecting, and
you're not comfortable, maybe you don't like cold calling. Maybe you don't like sending cold emails.
Maybe you don't like networking. I'd suggest you put yourself in a situation to do those things,
because the reality is the more you do those things, you're uncomfortable with
the more they become natural. You'll figure it out and you'll become comfortable. And prospecting
requires certain things. We do repetitively that are uncomfortable. So become comfortable
with the uncomfortable. All right, strategy. Number four to become master of prospecting is
have a magnetic personality. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, if you are to pick up the phone and
call people and reach out to them, but you're very much monotone in your voice. There's not a lot of
inflection. There's not a lot of volume, right? You become somebody that's very forgettable. And
that means your prospecting itself is going to fail. Right? Prospecting. If I connect with you,
I want you to remember me. So you have to think about, well, how do I ensure you remember me?
It could be the volume of my voice. If I'm networking. It could be the
fact that I wear bright red glasses. If I have a business card, it might be some
really bright color or odd shape on the business card that makes me stand out.
Anything that allows you to stand out right, and be magnetic. Be somebody that others remember
will help you be successful in prospecting. Because just because I connect with you,
doesn't mean you're going to think of me or remember me when it comes time that you need
to buy my product or service by if I'm memorable, if I'm magnetic, you're going to be drawn to me.
You're going to remember me. And that's going to ensure that my efforts and prospecting
lead to actually having a discussion and a conversion towards being a customer. Now,
if you are a sales expert and you're using these strategies to become a prospecting expert and
to always be prospecting, you'll want to use the link below to grab my 30 day sales action planner.
It's a free resource to use, but allows you to map out all the different steps and actions that
you want to take and then track your progress on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And after
all we know, at least takes at least 30 between 30 and 90 days to build a new habit. So you can use
this planner to make sure you put these habits into your calendar, get them scheduled and make
them happen. Now, if you are already an expert at prospecting, but you're trying to use these
strategies in order to sell into big companies, then you'll want to watch this video next,
to learn some additional strategies about how to sell the big companies. I appreciate you joining
me on this video. Make sure you check out my YouTube channel for a variety of other videos
on how to become a sales master. And I look forward to seeing you again soon, take care.