Your prospects need you now more than ever.

I could probably end this piece right now, but that would be anticlimactic, wouldn't it?

That’s a wrap on Season 3!

I’ve put together a quarter’s worth of prospecting episodes all in one place, which coincidentally is how long you should stay engaged with a prospect before you move on to another one.

This season discussed the frameworks I use with my clients to help them become more effective opportunity creators, and I hope it’s been helpful for you.

I don’t watch much baseball anymore. There was a time when it was ubiquitous on the tv every evening, but times change as kids grow up and they’re more interested in their own shows on the screen. I still manage to tune into the playoffs in October. Meaningful games are just too hard to turn down.

“Alright, Jeff, 25 episodes of prospecting theory. Would you please just tell me what to say?”

Content is not just for marketers anymore. On today’s episode, I’m going to show you how I’ve used content in the past as well as how I’m using it today. I think it’s going to reaffirm your belief and give you a couple of different spins on what you’re already doing.

"It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll."

Nothing worth achieving comes without hard work, and a career in sales is no different from AC/DC's 1975 classic about a band paying their dues in order to make it to the big time. It's not a 9-5 job. You don't get paid for your time, you get paid for your results, and a lot of times, that means working more hours. It's easy to imagine that the best-performing salespeople just outwork their peers.

I'm here to tell you that's not true. In a lot of cases, they actually work less.

I’ve laid out a pretty solid strategy for you thus far. You might be thinking, “Great, Jeff, but how do I act on this? How do I ask so many questions, so often, through so many channels, of so many people?”

Well, I’m glad you asked…

Most salespeople give up before they give themselves a chance at gaining any momentum. Prospecting isn’t a one-time event. You have to give up on the idea that success looks like saying the right thing to the right person at the right time. Think of it like a campaign. It’s a process you commit to. You build on each call, and you win the meeting as the result of your cumulative efforts.

Today I'm publishing an article for the 364th consecutive Sunday. That's seven years.

My wife reminded me last night that this kind of consistency is not something most humans even endeavor, let alone pull off. In a world where daily creation and posting are the norms, it's easy to lose sight of the significance of a feat like this. So I'll take her advice and (gently) pat myself on the back for a second before I get ready to write something else for next week.

The inimitable Mark Hunter is my guest today on the show to discuss why sales reps spend so much time talking about themselves and their products instead of their prospects and their problems.

Nobody cares as much about your product as you do. As fascinating as you think it is, your prospects just don’t care. They don’t have the context (yet) for why they should be so enamored with it. You’re going to need their attention in order to create that context, and you’re certainly not going to get it by talking about yourself.

Everybody who's ever sold against a quota can relate.

The end of the month, quarter, or year involves a mad dash to the finish line. Of course, projects need to be completed, and beans need to be counted. These guideposts are important. What gets out of hand is when the deal's timing becomes more important than the deal's value.

Tension is my term for the group of emotions that has tone present in every sales process. It’s pretty simple. No tension means no emotion, which means no sale.

In your prospect’s eyes, your marketplace is a sea of sameness. You’re not the only that provides a solution to the problem they’re stuck on. There are very few companies that have truly groundbreaking technology, and a lot of your competitors’ products look pretty similar to yours.

People are reluctant to admit this, but we still don't completely appreciate the total effects of the last few years.

The pandemic caused fear, isolation, and a complete rejiggering of the way we work. We're only now beginning to experience the hangover of all the financial strings that were pulled to keep things together. Our collective psyche has been rocked (to say the least).

As a result, there's been a reckoning of priorities. Everyone on the planet has been reminded of what's really important to them, and many of us realized that our preferences were a little (or a lot) out of whack.

Today, I’ve got the incomparable Samantha McKenna on the show with me to talk about personalization with your outreach. Sam calls it Show Me You Know Me.

I know something you don’t know, and you’d probably be better off if you knew it too.

"That can't be it. You must be doing it wrong."

That's the inner monologue of the overwhelming majority of salespeople out there.

Every salesperson starts out having some kind of intuitive notion of what they need to do in order to sell their best. Then they promptly doubt it.

Think about it. Nobody ever reads your email, returns your call, or accepts your connection request unless they think there is value that you can provide them. Your job when you’re prospecting, especially early on in the campaign, is not to make a sales or even book a meeting. Your job is to build credibility with your buyer.

How do you build that credibility? Present them with insights that will help them. Not just data, but intelligence around that data. You’re trying to demonstrate that you bring something powerful to the table- you.

First things first, these are the table stakes for professional prospecting. They often get taken for granted, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know that you need to be reminded of them. You can’t afford to miss any of these if you expect your best results.