I’ve never been trained how to prospect.
While it’s easy to play the blame game, your ability to improve your skills is in your hands. All it takes is a little initiative.
The truth is, you can stay where you are—average—and mope. Or you can take charge of your career path, invest in yourself, and become a top performer.
Let me share with you six things that you can do right now to overcome any lack of prospecting training.
**This blog is part of the 15 Reasons Holding Salespeople Back series**
1. Don’t blame your boss, you are in control.
Hey, I prospect, but my company’s never trained me. Who says, your company has to be the one to train you? You can train yourself. You can do it.
There are plenty of learning tools available for you—including this whole blog series. I put free content out on Youtube and LinkedIn every week. Listen to The Sales Hunter Podcast or Sales Logic Podcast.
Go further by investing in a masterclass at The Sales Hunter University. Need to get better at Email Prospecting? I’ve got a course for that. What about Following up? Yep, also have a course for that. Click here to see more learning opportunities.
2. Invest your money.
I hear this excuse: “I wish I could read your book, but my company won’t buy it for me.” Do you expect your company to feed you? Do you expect your company to buy you your toilet paper? No. You buy it yourself, with the money you earn.
With the money you earn, you can invest in yourself. You can buy the books that you need, or the programs you need.
If you have a gym membership, what is it designed to do? It’s designed to help get you in shape, right? You paid for that, right? Yes. In the same way you invest in your body or your health, try investing in your mind and in your career.
3. Dedicate 30 minutes a day to learning prospecting.
If you want to become a master, you’ve got to put the time in.
There are lots of theories out there: it’s the 10,000 hour rule, or the 30,000 hour rule. Throw all those out the window. If you just take 30 minutes a day and invest it in what you want to learn, within two months, you’re going to be better than the vast majority of people you go up against.
If you were to take 30 minutes a day and invest in learning prospecting—that might be watching videos, reading blogs, reading books, studying, role-playing with yourself, connecting with people who do it well—I guarantee it, within three months you would become much more capable in prospecting.
Would you become an expert in a few months? Probably not, but it’s okay. You would be well on your way to becoming an expert.
4. Create a peer group.
Get three or four other people who have the same challenges as you do, and collectively work together as a peer group to challenge and share and lift each other up. It is amazing at what a peer group can do.
What happens is, as one person begins to achieve success, you can ask, “Hey, what are you doing? Share with me.”
You exchange ideas. It’s amazing how you lift each other up.
5. Become an SME.
Prospecting encompasses a lot of elements. Lead generation, qualifying…that’s just the start of it. Become a subject matter expert in one specific piece.
It might be qualifying the prospect, or getting the right leads. It might be clearly defining your ICP. After you become an SME in that piece, then you become an SME in another piece of prospecting and you work your way through the prospecting food chain.
6. View each day as a learning day.
I do this even today. Each day I ask myself, what did I learn today?
Every day I learn something new to help me prospect. What does that do? It makes me better.
Don’t wait around for your company to take initiative for you. Take the reins on your own learning, and your own professional development.
How Any Salesperson Can Be a Subject Matter Expert
+Define your business and seek specific learning opportunities to boost your value.
Find Ep. 129 on The Sales Hunter Podcast now.
Will ChatGPT Take My Sales Job?
w/ Beth Z, your Nerdy BFF
Beth Z and Mark discuss the benefits as well as penalties to using ChatGPT, and when to use caution with the results.
Don’t miss Thursday’s episode, live on 8/31!
Read the August ’23 Edition of:
Moments Matter! Magazine
with articles from Meridith Elliott Powell
and Mark Hunter!
The Most Comprehensive Prospecting Training Available.
54 meticulously crafted modules at your fingertips.
Click here to learn everything you need to know about turning prospects into profits.
Copyright 2023, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of A Mind for Sales and High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results.
