- March 31, 2025
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
April Fools.
We all get these spammy emails and LinkedIn messages on a daily basis which promise more meetings, more customers, an increase in revenue, and success like we’ve never seen before.
It’s April Fools every day!
Even the people who provide the services promising inbound leads, meetings, and sales increases are struggling to generate inbound leads! It’s true. There is so much noise and competition for eyeballs, creating cluttered inboxes just waiting for us to hit the delete key, that click through rates are at an all-time low. If they can’t generate leads for themselves, how in the world will they generate leads for you?
The AI behind those poorly written messages, calls to action, and workflows responsible for sending multiple, ineffective follow-up messages, are not the answer to the challenges with your ever-shrinking pipeline.
You won’t want to hear this, you won’t want to acknowledge this, you won’t want to act on this, and you won’t want to do the hard work associated with this. Today, there is only one effective, manageable and controllable way to quickly build a quality sales pipeline. It’s very similar to how we did it before the prominence of email, text, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.
I’m talking about the phone, but it’s evolved tremendously from how we used the phone prior to 2000.
Today, there are sales intelligence tools that provide us with direct lines as well as phone numbers to your contacts’ cell phones. CRM applications have replaced 3×5 cards for easy organization and documentation. Switchboards and personal gatekeepers have mostly gone away so you can access decision makers much more easily than in the old days. And most importantly, your phone is always with you, has a full charge, and you can make your calls from anywhere without the need for a roll of dimes to make pay phones work. Prospecting does not require a desk.
The technology improvements aside, prospecting is still not easy and for most salespeople, it’s really hard. That’s why only a small percentage of salespeople are effectively doing this. The following list identifies 21 things salespeople must master in order to succeed at finding new business while using the phone:
- Understanding of your prospect’s most likely problems
- Excellent messaging that quickly grabs your prospect’s attention and gets them engaged
- Quality script to get the call started
- Effective call-to-action
- Easy, non-threatening delivery of the messaging and script
- Tonality that causes prospects to choose to speak with the caller
- Being likable
- Ability to find common ground
- Quick on Your Feet
- Rejection-Proof
- Confident
- Happy
- Problem-Solving Attitude
- No Need to be Liked
- Procrastination-Free
- Commitment
- Discipline
- Perseverance
- Motivation
- Personal Responsibility
- Supportive Beliefs
Lumped into a single phrase, this is “grunt work” and depending on the business that salespeople find themselves in, might be required until the salesperson has established their territory, vertical, or sustainable book of business. Or, if those conditions do not apply, prospecting continues into perpetuity.
Like I said, it’s hard but if everyone could do it, they would.
There’s a problem with all of this that most executives have not considered.
Most salespeople who entered sales more than fifteen years ago had to prospect for new business in order to survive. Most of those veteran salespeople have forgotten how to prospect and if we are being honest, they may not have been very willing or effective at prospecting back then!
Most new salespeople never had to make cold calls as that was delegated to BDRs and SDRs who have universally sucked at prospecting, averaging just 1.5 new meetings scheduled per week.
Yes, it’s that bad.
What’s worse is that most companies don’t consider pipeline quantity and quality the biggest challenge in the sales organization! Most would say it’s the low win rate or the percentage of opportunities that stall in the pipeline.
If you want help solving your problem with pipeline building, stalled opportunities and/or win rate, I encourage you to reach out and we will be happy to discuss it with you.
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