I missed my anniversary! On June 2, 2007 I wrote my first post for my B2B Sales Blog. And over the past two years I've written several posts addressing the need to prospect as well as specific prospecting strategies. This continues to be an important topic to explore because so many sales people struggle with it. Here are a few early posts on the topic, as well as one from earlier this year:
•Know Your Numbers - understanding your critical conversion ratios is key to driving activity and knowing how much time you need to focus on prospecting activities.
•Multiple Conversations - highlighting the importance of balancing your pipeline.
•Schedule Time With Yourself - how to treat your "cold call time" like an appointment with an important client.
•Voicemail Strategies - if you make lots of cold calls you'll want to read this.
•Last Call - a great habit that will really increase your sales production.
•Five Conversation Starters - not sure what to say?
•Building Sales Momentum - when's the best time to make cold calls?
•Power Hours - focus your time on productive selling.
•Ten Ways to Fill Up Your Sales Pipeline (Without Cold Calling) -- pretty self explanatory.
We all know prospecting is the lifeblood of sales productivity. Here are some questions we'll post on various forums to get input from other sales people.
1.How much time do you dedicate to prospecting activities every day?
2.Have you defined a process to generate referrals and do you follow it consistently?
3.What is your most effective prospecting strategy?
We'll post some of the better responses we receive later this week.