By Todd Duncan

The Law of the Bull’s-Eye says that if you don’t aim for the best prospects you will do business with any prospect. That’s because in sales, if you aren’t aiming for the bull’s-eye, you won’t beat your competition very often. On the other hand, when you’re good at hitting the bull’s-eye prospects in your field, you can upstage your competition on a regular basis.

THE PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY OF PROFITABLE PROSPECTING

The fact is that even if you have great interviewing skills, great presentation skills, and great objection management skills, but don’t have the right prospects, none of that really matters. Obviously, nothing is sold without someone to sell it to. Therefore, if you’re not prospecting, your business is dying. Prospecting is the blood that will keep your sales business alive. And not just when you’re starting off. Prospecting is not an on-and-off switch; it is a volume dial that is turned up when you want more business and turned down when business is cruising. But there is a right and wrong way to gaining prospects, and you must understand the difference.

It doesn’t matter how many prospects you see. It matters how you see the right prospects.

To a certain extent, all of us play the numbers game in selling. However, it is erroneous to assume that if you see more people you will get more business. It’s true that you usually need more prospects when you are starting your sales career than when you’re established. But in either case, it’s not the numbers that ultimately count. It doesn’t matter how many prospects you see. It matters how you see the right prospects.

Would you rather see ten prospects and get one sale, or see one prospect and get one sale? Easy answer, right? It never feels good to have nine prospects say no. Your confidence and profits are only impacted positively by how many people say yes, not by how many calls you make. Therefore, prospecting is a productivity game, not a numbers game. And to maximize your prospecting efficiency you must replace the traditional “more is better” quantity concept with a “less is best” quality concept as you master the Law of the Bull’s-Eye in your career. This is especially critical when you consider how much time prospecting can take from your day if it doesn’t produce sales.

All sales presentation success is predicated on hitting the right prospects who will in turn become clients that reap high returns for life.

I am constantly amazed at how many sales are left on the table when salespeople fail to think long-term. But if you prospect with the purpose of landing the right clients for life, you will resolve to be purposeful in securing their initial trust. What you do between the time you meet a person and the time that individual decides to buy deter¬mines whether he or she will become your client or your competition’s.

What I want you to understand to this point is that aiming for the best prospects is not cold-calling everyone and their mothers. It’s not randomly phoning someone whose name you’ve never seen before that moment. It’s not walking into an office that you’ve never been to and trying to meet with someone with whom you’ve never communicated. It’s not leaving a business card on a restaurant table, under a windshield wiper, or on someone’s front door. High trust selling has nothing to do with the luck of the draw or the alignment of the stars.

Prospecting that leads to high trust sales and long-term clients has everything to do with preparation (knowing how to take accurate aim) and execution (knowing when to release).

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