In my last sales blog post I provided some sales tips for the Going-Through-The-Motions prospector. This style of prospecting focuses on the activities of prospecting and not the results. In today’s sales blog post, I’m going to talk about a third style of prospecting that is equally ineffective.

“There was also a time when doctors used leeches to cure the sick.”

Back To The Future.
The third type of prospecting style that seems to pervade many sales departments is what I call the “We’ve-Always-Done-It-That-Way” approach. This technique borrows from old-school sales training. You won’t have to look far to find a sales training article or sales blog that is full of these antiquated sales tips.

Here are some examples:

• Closing techniques from the 1950’s. “Think how good you’ll look to your boss after you’ve installed this product. Let’s get this order signed right now.”
• Sales is nothing but a numbers game perspective.
• The use of scripts in order to assure that precisely the right words are used with the prospect.
• The salesperson does all the talking with few questions directed at the prospect.
• The salesperson has one sales skill – talking about features and benefits.

The New Realities.
The truth is that sales concepts have changed dramatically over the last 15 years. We have seen most of those changes in the last ten years with the Internet being the greatest catalyst. What has changed and how do we adapt?

• Buyers have heard more cheesy closing techniques than you know. They’re immune to them and turned off by this kind of manipulation. We have to be straightforward and transparent with prospects.
• Sales is not just a numbers game anymore. We have to segment our market and know exactly the kind of prospect we want to pursue. More time spent on fewer qualified prospects yields much better results than the old “dialing and smiling ’til it hurts” model.
• Increasingly, companies want to partner with fewer suppliers. Partnerships require a relationship. Prospects want to get to know you as much as they want to know your company. This isn’t accomplished with sales scripts.
• Prospects want us to know something about their business before we contact them. Additionally, we should be prepared to ask them focused open-ended questions to learn more about them.
• Features and benefits are something we need to know about our products. We call this value added selling today. However, we need to be able to take this concept beyond just our products and services and apply it to ourselves and the company we represent.

Sales Blog Epilogue.
We’ve-Always-Done-It-That-Way prospecting was fine in its day. It’s all the sales community knew at the time. There was also a time when doctors used leeches to cure the sick. They didn’t know any better either, but most have stopped…I hope.

Stay tuned for my fourth and final sales blog post in this series where I’ll cover one more type of sales prospecting style.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Related posts:

1. Sales Tips: What is Cycle Prospecting or Perpetual Prospecting?
2. Prospecting By Going-Through-The-Motions, Part 2 of 4
3. You’re More Effective At Prospecting Than You Think

Tags: Prospecting, prospects

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