William James, the father of modern psychology, taught us that the number one need of human beings is not to understand but to be understood. You will be enormously successful if this is also the number one need that you fill in your selling process.

Your prospects will not be inclined to listen or care what you have to say until they have unloaded what’s on their mind. Once they have the chance to “get it all out”, they will then be ready to listen - and more importantly - ready to be sold.

Two Ears One Mouth
As salespeople, we have stores of helpful information to share. Often times, we can’t wait to jump in and blurt out our wisdom and knowledge. The fact is that just has to wait. Instead of talking endlessly about what we do, how we do it and with whom we do it, we would be wise to learn how to ask questions that draw out the issues or concerns that our prospect has. Only when we fully understand what they are experiencing can we offer an intelligent solution.

Take stock of your process. Are you asking questions and gaining insight to prospects problems and concerns or are you “showing up and throwing up”?

The Importance of Prospecting
Getting salespeople in front of qualified prospects is typically the number one issue of companies. The ability of the sales force to keep the pipeline full is key to success.

Without an effective prospecting system in place, the sales pipeline is weak which creates pressure to be more aggressive in selling to poorly qualified prospects. This leads to poor sales, deteriorating margins, frustrated salespeople and concerned management.

Prosper Prospecting Mentality

Prospecting can be equated to panning for gold. During the Gold Rush days in California, prospectors set up camp by a stream and patiently sifted through pan after pan of gravel and sand in the hopes of finding a gold nugget or two. It was hard, frustrating work, not unlike sales prospecting today. Perhaps the major difference between the gold prospector and the sales prospector is their attitude toward the process. Gold prospectors knew and accepted that they’d have to go through a great deal of gravel and sand to find a nugget. Instead of being frustrated when most of their effort didn’t produce results they accepted it as the reality of the job.

Unlike the gold prospector, today’s salesperson has an unrealistic expectation of prospecting. Instead of accepting the reality that most of their prospecting efforts will be in vain they believe that their prospecting activity should produce significant results. As a result they become frustrated with each call that doesn’t pan out.

To prevent disappointment and frustration, salespeople need to change their view of prospecting and remember that prospecting is a discarding activity. The successful salesperson understands that fact and realizes he will need to go through a number of contacts to find the real nugget.

Often times prospects put out a Request For Proposal and expect a response from all the “vendors” they send it to. When you receive one of these RFP’s what should you do? Good question. Before we answer it let’s take a look at what is happening.

What most likely is happening is that your prospect is entertaining bids or proposals from several of your competitors or they may have even decided on a vendor already and are looking for your proposal to keep your competitor honest.

When you comply with the RFP you are accepting their agenda and are playing by their rules. If you play by their rules and respond to their process you are doing exactly what every one of your competitors is doing. There is no differentiation between you and your competitors except price. And if you are not low price you don’t usually get the business.

There is another problem in doing this. By responding you are assuming that the prospect understands fully the problems, issues and concerns that they are hoping your product or service will eliminate. That assumption, which leads to a premature presentation, is wrong most of the time.

Additionally, bidding is not selling. Selling involves human contact to explore the full nature of the problem so that a customized solution can be recommended. Unless you sell a commodity you should avoid this altogether.

Instead, you should respond by sending a letter politely explaining why you don’t answer RFPs or bids and why it isn’t appropriate for either party to do business this way. The letter should make it very clear that you would like to talk with them to explore the full range of their issues to determine if you may be of service to them. If they choose not to do this then that is their choice.

After all, at some point you must eventually get face to face with them if they are to become a client. Why not start that process early? Do this and you will eliminate a lot of wasted time.

If you ask most people in the sales business this question they will tell you something like “the purpose of prospecting is to get people to give you an appointment.” They think that their job is to try and convince people to give them an appointment. They think if they can make enough appointments and talk to enough people then everything will work out fine. They also will tell you “sales is a numbers game.” See enough people and make enough presentations and you will close enough deals. That is so old school. That paradigm went out in the 1970’s. Unfortunately, most companies, and sales managers still believe and teach that approach. That is why there is so much turnover and failure in the sales profession.

Think about it. If your goal in sales is to talk to x number of people and to set y number of appointments to close z number of deals, what happens when you fail to achieve that goal. You feel like a lousy, miserable failure. No matter how strong your ego you can only take so much. So what should you do?

Develop a new paradigm that prospecting is the culling out or disqualifying of suspects. If you start trying to disqualify people and you start getting a lot of “NO’S” you are then achieving your goal. You can feel good about yourself. We call this going for the “NO.”

The objective of prospecting is to eliminate those who have no need, no urgency, or no money for your product or service. Most sales people try to qualify when what they should be doing is trying to disqualify as many suspects as they can. Funny thing is when you adopt this attitude you stop wasting time, become more relaxed and start getting more “Yeses”. It really is a paradox.

Perhaps the answer to this question can be found from Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the University of Michigan, and a vanguard in the field of Positive Psychology.

According to Fredrickson negative emotions get people to act in particular ways or what she calls “specific action tendencies.” Most of us know this as fight or flight. In essence, we have been biologically programmed by evolution to take action when we perceive danger or feel threatened. “Positive emotions don’t necessarily narrow people toward a specific action like negative emotions do,” says Fredrickson.

What does this have to do with selling? If you want to get a prospect to take action and buy your product or service you are more likely to succeed if you find a prospect that is experiencing a negative emotion. Negative emotions include things like losing money or time, loss of productivity, high employee turnover, etc.

The one thing that all of these have in common is that they all relate to loss of something. Fear of loss (negative emotion) is a more powerful short-term motivator of human behavior than is the desire (positive emotion) for gain.

Think about it. When do people go to a physician? When they feel great and want to learn how to enhance (positive) their health or when they are in “pain” (negative) and want to get rid of their “pain.” Same thing when it comes to filing income tax returns. Over one million taxpayers wait until April 14th to file their taxes. Why? Fear of having to pay a penalty if they don’t?

Learn to become a heat-seeking missile for “pain.” If you do you will increase your income, shorten your sales cycle and have more fun selling.