Winter is upon us so this is a great time to read a post I originally created a while back. Do you feel anxious or scared about walking into a business for the first time? Join the club! Here are some things I do to motivate myself to get out in the field and prospect. I think everyone reading this article has enough confidence in their own sales ability to believe that if they really got out in the field for several hours a day, they would generate new accounts and increase their commission. So, how do we actually convince ourselves to get out in the field? Here are a few tips:
#1. Schedule a 3 hour block of time. Don’t plan to go out all day to brand new businesses, it is exhausting and stressful! Start with a 3 hour block of time where you are going to do nothing but visit new businesses.
#2. Plan for failure in general but success at each location. Let me explain what I mean. Too many agents, think, If I get out there I am going to do so amazing that I will probably sell everyone!!! Strangely enough, this thought process creates a Fear of Failure that keeps you from going out in the field. After all, if you get out there, you might not do as well as you think, so you feel like if you actually go out in the field your self worth could go down because you might not do as well as you think you should do. So, plan on the three hours going terrible! If you get one person interested, you had a great day! Lower your expectations so you can get out in the field and then, as you walk into each store, have the attitude, that, This might be the one that is going to be interested!
#3. Don’t try to fix your pitch in the field. The temptation after that first is to sit in the car and think about everything that went wrong and how you can fix it! Don’t do that! Just go to the next business. Keep track of each stop and a general note about what happened and at the end of the three hours no matter how wonderful or terrible it went, you can analyze it at the end. While you are out in the field, just go from one business to the next.
#4. Don’t judge a business before you go inside. There are only a handful of businesses that I don’t walk into when I am prospecting. Attorney’s offices, Huge Corporate stores, etc. Everybody else gets a visit. Don’t sit in your car for 10 min. thinking about if this business might buy. It would take you 30 sec. to walk inside and get a quick No and then you will know not to go there again.
#5. Don’t let big deals or interested prospects slow you down. If you walk in and they say, We are corporate and you would have to call our main office. Get the phone number, walk out and call them while you are walking to the car. Take some notes and move on. If you get a good prospect and they give you a statement, schedule a follow up appointment, take notes and move on. Keep going, because sometimes you will have a really good day and get 4 or 5 good prospects in 3 hours, but you need that great day to make up for the terrible day that is coming when you get only 1 person who is interested. Make your good days as good as they can possibly be in the field!
#6. Reward yourself for accomplishing your goal. I know this sounds childish, but there is an ice cream store near my home and when I was out prospecting I would have a goal of walking into 20 businesses for the first time and as soon as I walked out of business number 20, regardless of the results, I would drive to that ice cream shop, get myself and ice cream cone and sit in my car to listen to an audio book on american history which is very relaxing for me and something I love doing. After a few months, my mouth would start to salivate when I walked into business number 17 or 18 and I was just more motivated to keep going! If you want to be your own boss then you must be a boss to yourself! You are not a one man show, you are a two man show. There is you the boss and there is you the sales agent. You the boss needs to write down some words of encouragement for you the sales agent, you the boss needs to give you the sales agent a reward when you achieve a goal, you the boss needs to make a schedule for you the sales agent which is a job requirement. If you can’t do these things right now, get some help from your spouse or a good friend and give them your goals and report to them weekly with a status update to make you feel more accountable and to give you the joy of approval when you have done a good job!
I hope this article has encouraged you to get out in the field! Feel free to ask me any questions that you have.
James Shepherd james@ccsalespro.com
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