Smart Prospecting That Works Every Time!: Win More Clients with Fewer Cold Calls

PRAISE FOR SMART PROSPECTING THAT WORKS EVERY TIME!

Smart Prospecting is your new go-to sales bible. Complementing proven, traditional techniques with a modern approach, following Mike’s step-by-step process will amplify your success as a sales professional.

—Jeffrey Hayzlett, global business celebrity and bestselling

author of Running the Gauntlet and The Mirror Test

In Smart Prospecting Mike Krause introduces a process that marries tried-and-true prospecting methods with today’s cutting-edge tools and technology. Follow his process and you’ll quickly fill your pipeline with qualified prospects and your pockets with bigger commission checks.

—Jeb Blount, CEO of SalesGravy.com and author of

People Buy YOU

The prospecting game has changed and few are playing it well. Mike Krause provides the prospecting success secrets in today’s business environment in Smart Prospecting. Don’t just read the book. Absorb every word!

—Lee B. Salz, Sales Management Strategist, Sales Architects

If you have to prospect or cold call for a living, then make sure you have Mike’s Smart Prospecting next to your phone. It is packed with up-to-date tips, shortcuts, and real-world scripts and techniques that will help you connect with and earn business from decision makers. An excellent resource you’ll use over and over again!

—Mike Brooks, author of The Ultimate Book of Phone Scripts,

www.MrInsideSales.com

In Krause’s new book, Smart Prospecting, you will learn everything you need to know about targeting the right clientele for your business. The book is a must-read for entrepreneurs and salespeople motivated to succeed.

—Elinor Stutz, inspirational speaker, CEO, and author of

Nice Girls DO Get the Sale: Relationship

Building That Gets Results

Smart Prospecting is one of the most complete books written on the topic of sales prospecting. Michael Krause provides an abundance of examples of how to use different media. Novice and veteran salespeople will benefit from the insights contained in this book.

—Kelley Robertson, sales trainer, keynote speaker,

and author of The Secrets of Power Selling

Smart Prospecting That Works Every Time! is the ideal book for entrepreneurs, salespeople, and want-to-bes. Time is our most valuable asset and Mike shows us how to prospect smarter, not harder, in less time. This is good R.O.T.I. (return on time invested).

—Bob Urichuck, ranked #4 in the World’s Top 30

Sales Gurus, author of Up Your Bottom Line

Nothing happens in the sale until you can reach a decision maker, and this book will show you how. I’ve read nearly every book on the topic of prospecting and this one is at the top of my list.

—Jake Atwood, President, Ovation Sales Group

Mike takes the unlimited number of things you could do for prospecting and simplifies it so you know exactly what to do starting now. This book is your new prospecting plan! Read, learn, and absorb this book before your competitors do. BUY IT NOW!

—Erik Luhrs, author of Be Do Sale and

creator of the GURUS Selling System

Mike’s approach will give you a better, Smarter approach to prospecting. Read it, apply it, and you’ll actually find yourself looking forward to prospecting.

—S. Anthony Iannarino, www.thesalesblog.com

Mike’s powerful approach enables you to connect with your prospects deeply, to understand how to stand in their shoes, and to become a trusted advisor. One book—one perfect solution for all sales professionals!

—Judith E. Glaser, bestselling author of Creating WE,

Chairman of the Creating WE Institute,

www.creatingwe.com

Mike Krause takes away the smoke and mirrors, leaving both experienced and new salespeople with practical, easy-to-adopt lessons that help anyone learn to sell more effectively.

—Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling™,

www.wendyweiss.com

Copyright © 2013 by Michael D. Krause. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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After many years of struggle and getting my PhD from the School of Hard Knocks, it is a great honor to present to you Smart Prospecting That Works Every Time!

I want to dedicate this solution to you—the person in search of sales greatness and sales success.

I have devoted my life to selling, and it’s my relentless passion to help you not struggle as much as I have in my sales career. I want to inspire you to sell more than you ever imagined and show you how to be successful in selling. I want you to have the luxuries in life that you and your family deserve.

What you are about to learn will completely change your life forever. It will make sales sense to you, and a lightbulb will go off in your mind. You will achieve new heights that you thought were only for the chosen few.

Follow this step-by-step process and you will achieve sales success.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

How to Use This Book

Chapter 1   How Does a Prospect Think?

Chapter 2   He Shoots, He Scores!

Chapter 3   What Prospects Value

Chapter 4   Ready, Fire, Aim!

Chapter 5   Cultivating Great Bedside Manners

Chapter 6   Circling the Wagons

Chapter 7   Breaching the Fortress

Chapter 8   Objectives Are Closer Than They Appear

Chapter 9   Soup to Nuts

Chapter 10   Your SMART Prospecting Launch

Appendix A   Shared Traits Worksheet

Appendix B   Opening Statement Template

Appendix C   Daily Time Management Log

Appendix D   Sales Sense Letter Framework

Appendix E   Prospect Approach Planning Checklist

Appendix F   Precall Checklist

Appendix G   Postcall Evaluation

Appendix H   Call Script Worksheets

Appendix I    Smart Prospecting That Works Every Time! Book Evaluation

Notes

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing this book has been more than a four-year journey and one of my lifelong dreams to accomplish. I’m thankful to have a wonderful family and friends who allow me to be me and be my creative self. I’m grateful to my clients who allow me to beta test my theories and ideas out in the field with them.

To Cheryl Freer, my assistant and friend, for helping make sense of my ideas and make them easy to understand to the reader, I’m forever grateful.

To my agent, Leticia Gomez at Savvy Literary Services, for believing in me and helping me navigate through the complexities of becoming a published author.

To the amazing and dynamic team at McGraw-Hill for publishing this book and making it the best of the best.

I truly have loved this journey, and I’m grateful to be surrounded by extremely talented people who help me be the best I can be.

INTRODUCTION

Sales (common) sense is not so common.

What if you could see more qualified people every day in every business week? How would that affect your sales income? Statistically, it should improve your sales effectiveness and bring in more money for you.

Seven to ten days. That’s the average amount of time it should take you to set up an appointment to see the decision maker at a well-researched targeted company.

Arguably the most important step in any sales cycle is setting up a first appointment with a prospective client. There is so much that must be done correctly before you are finally granted the opportunity to sit down with that prospect and help him understand how you can help him do business better, more efficiently, or more cost-effectively. Remember, you get only one chance to make that all-important first impression.

Here are some compelling sales facts for you to consider:

1. A lead that is called five minutes after it was generated is 22 times more likely to close than one called after 30 minutes.

2. Seventy-eight percent of prospects who convert to a sale do so with the company that first called them.

3. The average lead takes between five and nine attempts to reach.

4. Those who make changes in their sales process regularly achieve over 40 percent improvement in close rates.

5. Forty percent of Internet leads convert eventually if they are consistently followed up.

A Culpepper and Associates compensation survey and services study on the sales industry discovered the following:

• 94% of all sales veterans have had fewer than five days of formal sales training.

• 87% of all sales managers have had fewer than eight days of formal sales training.

• 98% of all salespeople don’t follow a consistent sales method.

• 93% of all salespeople volunteer a price decrease without being asked.

• 87% of prospect inquiries are never followed up by a sales contact.

• 81% of all sales take five calls or more.

• 80% of all salespeople are willing to accept a 90 percent rejection rate.

• 40% of all sales veterans experience bouts of call reluctance severe enough to threaten their contribution in sales.

• 93% of all sales veterans have had no training in how to generate their own leads.

So where does Smart Prospecting That Works Every Time! fit in? It’s the next generation of selling by leveraging modern-day technology with old-school proven sales tactics. We have all heard that Web 2.0, with its widespread information sharing, interoperability, collaboration, and user-centered design, is quickly being upstaged by Web 3.0, with its sophisticated and complex applications, greater device independence, portability, and even greater processing power.

Similarly, harnessing new technology innovations catapults the professional salesperson into a selling universe. SMART Prospecting provides you with a fresh take on the traditional sales appointment–setting guidelines, along with a briefcase full of advanced tools and applications. This lets you speed and simplify the SMART Prospecting process: from identifying your prospect right through the all-important first face-to-face meeting.

I like using SMART as an acronym for thorough, successful prospecting. It lets you as a professional salesperson really zero in on the prospect to succeed in selling beyond your wildest dreams:

S: solutions. Solve your clients’ problems.

M: measure. Measure your success.

A: attitude. Stay positive.

R: resilience. Know how to handle objections.

T: trusted advisor. Be an invaluable resource to your clients.

Whether you are a single-person business, a new sales professional in a small company, or the sales manager in a Fortune 500 multinational corporation, getting a first appointment with a prospect is a universal challenge. True, some of the preliminary work may have been done for you with automated searches, but in every instance, you’ll have to take virtually the same steps to find prospects and set appointments that lead to a successful sale.

Although we’ll be referring to you throughout this book, meaning you the individual salesperson, it could mean you the corporation or business entity just as easily. Don’t go into this thinking that it may not apply because you’re part of a larger entity or a one-person enterprise. Efficient SMART Prospecting is an invaluable skill that not many professional salespeople master without years of trial and error, much to the detriment of their income year after year.

This book provides you with the updated fundamental steps that lead to setting up that first appointment so that you can consistently be successful.

It’s our natural inclination as human beings to just do something—anything. But in this instance, what you must do first is research, learn, and experiment—and then probably change your process. Yes, we’ll be going back to square one and starting the whole prospecting process anew; when something isn’t working, that’s the time to get back to basics and figure out what went wrong along the way.

When you have mastered and internalized these steps, it will be time to make that first call.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This is a journal for your success: a road map and a learning tool for you to discover your unique sales style. I want to warn you that this is not a quick-fix overnight miracle pill, and I would never sell you any dream that could not be fulfilled. It is critical that you follow my proven step-by-step process to maximize your earnings potential—starting right now.

Do you think success is easy? Guess again. It is only through focus and diligence that true success is achieved. I believe in you, and I want you to be a lifelong friend and client of mine. The question is, Do you believe in yourself? I know life can be challenging, especially in this new age of a leaderless society. I mean this in a good way, because I want to inspire you to reach new heights. I will pave the runway and give you the plane; you have to supply the fuel. You can do this!

Just read each page and study it over and over. How many times do you think an Olympic athlete practices the same move? One time? Two or three times? Try in the thousands to get it right. Experts generally agree that it takes about 10,000 hours for someone to become accomplished at a specific skill. Succeeding in sales is no different. To be in the top 10 percent, you have to practice, practice, and then practice some more. There are no shortcuts. Put in the work, and the work will pay off tenfold.

Every profession requires practice. Why do you think you’re any different just because you’re in sales? Practice what you learn every day.

Do the following as you go through the book:

Read the section, apply the principle, tweak, read again and apply the principle, tweak over and over until you have it down cold.

After going through this cycle a few times, you will be much better equipped to make appointment-setting calls in the business world.

Above all, remember that you must sell to people in the way they want to be sold to. Follow their buying process, not your selling process. Without a doubt, one of the biggest mistakes I see is the sales professional losing control over the sales process. Once that happens, trust me, it’s all over.

At the end of each sales call, ask yourself: What’s the