I have seen one agent after the other get slowed down by one good prospect. They get out in the field and start prospecting for a week, their pipeline starts to fill up and then, they find the one prospect who is going to make them all the money they need for the week! This might be a single location business that doesn’t need a free terminal and the sales agent imagines the commission hitting their bank account or it might be a multi-location deal and the agent thinks, “Wow, this one sale could be 2 or 3 sales which would make my whole week!” Either way, they abandon new prospecting efforts, visit other follow up appointments with an “I don’t really need your business” attitude and zero in on this one prospect.
What can you do to avoid this problem?
#1 – Remember that until a prospect completes all the paperwork they are not a sale. You have at least a 30% chance of losing their business no matter what you do. If I took all the customers who told all of our agents this last week that they were very interested and wanted the agent to come back, I promise you I couldn’t close them at 100%. At least 30% of these people wouldn’t buy from me and actually if I closed them at 70% I would be doing very well. Because of this, it is foolish to put all your hopes of income on one account.
#2 – Hold yourself accountable to prospect for 2 hours every day. If you have a great day and make a sale or even two sales, you should still prospect for 2 hours that day. Prospecting is defined as speaking with a business owner for the first time. No matter how big of a week you have had this week, you need to spend 2 hours every single day walking into businesses where you have not yet spoken to the owner.
#3 – Don’t ever get zeroed in on one or two prospects. Instead, think about your pipeline as a whole. Rather than thinking, “I have these two really good prospects and I am going to close both of them.” Think this, “My pipeline contains 10 qualified prospects, I am going to follow up and try to close all 10 this week and I am confident that 2 or 3 of them will say YES!”
#4 – If you do land a big account, don’t let it suck your schedule dry! Sometimes the worst thing that can happen for an agent is closing a big sale. They close a 10 location deal, they make a bunch of commission and then they spend the next 3 months working on the installation and servicing the account because they really don’t know how to work these larger deals. Then, one day they wake up and think, “Wow, this account is installed and processing…. and I am broke!!!” At this point they have no pipeline, no money and often have to quit on their business with one big account in their portfolio. When you close a big deal, give me a call and let me walk you through how to effectively and efficiently install and service this account while maintaining your prospecting schedule. You want this big account to be the lift you need to become very profitable rather than the anchor that sinks you to failure.
Hope you enjoyed these short tips!
James Shepherd
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