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    Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success
    Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success
    Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success
    Ebook68 pages50 minutes

    Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success

    By Velton Showell III

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    About this ebook

    After spending the last 23 years of my life in Sales, I decided to write this book on a topic that has plagued salespeople regardless of industry for generations. Every business in society has one goal; to generate revenue. For business to thrive, products and services have to be sold. For something to be sold, a customer has to be identified and convinced into making an appointment, reviewing a product, sitting through a presentation, or simply agreeing to try out the salesperson’s product. Whatever the end result, identification of the customer is paramount to a positive outcome.
    As a salesperson and ultimately as a Director of Sales, or as I like to call it a Sales Coach; I found the one thing that creates anxiety in every salesperson is PROSPECTING! These 10 letters can send even the most experienced, savvy salespeople into a re-prioritization mode. “As soon as I finish these things on my To Do List, I’m going to start prospecting for new business.” This anxiety is not a function of experience or the lack thereof. It is inherent in the human makeup. Prospecting deals with a range of emotions that many of us would rather not encounter. Rejection, frustration, and the feeling of running in place and not getting anywhere are all issues and emotions that give salespeople anxiety.
    Many times prospecting is unfairly linked to straight cold calling. Cold calling is the function of picking up the phone and calling the first name on the list, or the screen, and reading a script or making it up as you go along. Sometimes it means just showing up on a potential client’s doorstep in an attempt to turn a prospect into a customer. While cold calling is one aspect of prospecting, it is one of the most ineffective. As we will discuss later, it’s a very hit or miss philosophy. Prospecting should be strategic and follow an identification process, similar to the old TV series Colombo, where actor detective Peter Faulk used a myriad of tactics to piece together the puzzle in an effort to turn suspects into prospects and eventually into customers of the judicial system.
    The obstacles that are encountered as you go through the prospecting process are outlined. We will address and recommend proven tactics to diffuse the many issues that arise as we accomplish our objective. Once we understand why it’s necessary to prospect and commit to it, we must identify the obstacles and learn the ways to overcome them. Areas addressed in this volume include effective use of the phone system which I refer to as the Prospecting Bermuda Triangle. The recommendations will describe ways of dealing with voice mail, plus choosing the words to leave a powerful message that will increase your chances of getting a call back.
    The discussions that follow will provide strategies for dealing with the human being; Gatekeeper charged with the task of screening calls for the prospect and deflecting the unarmed sales solicitor. This book will also provide a discussion of strategies surrounding the act of making the call, what do I do, how do I get the information I need? Last, we will discuss post-call follow-up; the process of ending the call and beginning the newly cultivated relationship. Handling this correctly can get your new relationship off to a great start. Handling it incorrectly will send a negative signal that requires an inordinate amount of time to overcome.
    The purpose of writing “Prospecting: The Key to Your Future Success” is to give readers that Colombo like attitude and ammunition needed to tackle the task that makes every salesperson grimace. This book will give you some ideas of what to expect and the “How Tos” of dealing with those issues as you chart the course to sales success. Some inspirational excerpts have been added that have helped me over the years. I wish you all the best!
    “Prospecting is the Key to Your Future Success!”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVelton Showell III
    Release dateAug 15, 2014
    ISBN9781478708056
    Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success
    Author

    Velton Showell III

    Velton W. Showell IIIVelton is a dynamic nationally recognized speaker, trainer, published author, and business consultant. He speaks to, teaches, and trains clients all over the United States and the Caribbean encouraging them to transform their thinking to move their professional and personal performance from good to great!Beginning in the late 80’s, Velton began to utilize his talent for connecting people and helping them achieve higher levels of success. In 1983 Velton's life changed as he life moved over 500 miles away from family and friends, to embark on a career in the hospitality industry. Realizing how fulfilling and difficult a transform like this could be Velton began to develop himself and utilize his experiences to help others, that may be going through similar situations. He was destined to serve others. He began to better understand the true meaning of a service mentality.Velton began his career in hotel operations as a Management Trainee and then a Night Manager handling the problems and difficult situations that arose, in a hotel running 98% occupancy on an annual basis. Yes, maintaining your focus and high levels of achievement were essential to success in that environment and it helped groom Velton very well for the path he was about to embark upon.Velton continued his education and growth in the hospitality industry moving across the country and into sales positions at numerous hotels, with some of the most exclusive and highly sought after hotels in the country. Serving as a Sales Manager and later Director of Sales & Marketing, Velton learned how to not only navigate the selling process himself, but how to teach, train and motivate his staffs to high levels of success.Being promoted to the position of Director of Sales & Marketing opened Velton’s eyes and mind to his passion for helping others and mentoring individuals in search of greatness. He became a corporate trainer and was often called upon to lead training sessions for large groups on the regional and national levels.After achieving record breaking years of success which included leading the sales team of the year for a major hotel chain and creating an environment that lead another sales operation to ahieve phenominal growth going from $24,000,000.00 to $98,000,000.00 in revenue in four years, Velton began to develop and write his own leadership and training curriculum.In 2008 during one of the most difficult economic times in recent history Velton launched his company, Strategic Solutions LLC to share his sales, service, and leadership knowledge with businesses around the world. His first book, “Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success” hit the market in 2010 and quickly became in great demand.Velton has since spoken and trained many highly successful sales forces in multiple industries. His leadership and sales talks have been featured on large stages at meetings and conventions throughout the United States.He is the host of weekly radio show on Blog Talk Radio entitled the Transformation Zone on Thursday evenings at 6:30pm EST, where he shares insight and information for business leaders who are interested in taking their organizations performance from good to great!Velton continues to work with and speak to sales professionals and those in leadership positions to increase productivity, improve their relationships, and achieve peak performance levels.

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      Book preview

      Prospecting the Key to Your Future Success - Velton Showell III

      "Prospecting:

      The Key to Your Future Success"

      Velton Showell III

      Author

      Foreword

      As a hospitality sales professional for over three decades, I have seen and supervised many successful salespeople. The one attribute they all shared was that they were all accomplished prospectors. If you believe success in sales is always achieving 100% of quota and constantly having a flow of leads to close, close this book. Sales success, in any industry, is not about achieving quota or closing business. These are simply measurements of the sales process.

      If you pay attention to your percentage achievement to quota, you will miss it more often than exceed it. For one thing, quotas only know one direction; up. For decades my wife and I have shown horses in hunter and event shows. Central to the pursuit of these sports is jumping fences on horseback. The greatest and most dangerous mistake a rider can make is to focus on or even look at the fence they are about to jump. It is the horse’s job to jump the fence. The rider’s responsibility is all the steps in between. You need to be focused on setting the horse up for a good approach to the next fence and this starts while you are going over the current fence. Accomplished riders always look beyond the current goal.

      You can’t control making quota. Although it is a key performance indicator, it is only a measurement. You can however, control aspects of the sales process that will allow you to successfully find and close business. If this is your goal, read on because this book will help you.

      As Velton shares in this book, prospecting is a much maligned term that is misunderstood by most. Many erroneously believe that it is a natural talent that great salespeople possess from birth. Natural talent in anything is very rare. Mark Burleigh pitched a perfect game for the Chicago White Sox in July of 2009. He was cut twice from his high school baseball team. He worked had to develop his abilities. The best salespeople invest in their skills and work hard at their craft.

      Successful prospecting is not cold calling. In fact, the best salespeople never have to make a cold call. This book debunks the cold call myth and demonstrates how every call can be a warmed-up call. A successful salesperson is always looking for referrals from their existing customers. This is also part of prospecting. An overlooked part of the process is discovering who knows someone you are trying to get to see. Within your company, within your professional and personal network, you can find someone who is connected. After you find them you need to demonstrate that you have something important to say to the connection. Most important, when you get the opportunity, you have no more than two minutes to state your case about why that person should listen further. You had better be prepared.

      If you want to be a sales professional and master your craft, prospecting is an important skill. Even experienced salespeople will find things that they did at one point but have forgotten. For them a quick tune up of the prospecting skill can greatly boost their success. For all that want to be a sales master, read on.

      Bruce W. Small

      Director of Business Solutions and Innovation

      Sales and Revenue

      Prologue

      After spending the last 23 years of my life in Sales, I decided to write this book on a topic that has plagued salespeople regardless of industry for generations. Every business in society has one goal; to generate revenue. For business to thrive, products and services have to be sold. For something to be sold, a customer has to be identified and convinced into making an appointment, reviewing a product, sitting through a presentation, or simply agreeing to try out the salesperson’s product. Whatever the end result, identification of the customer is paramount to a positive outcome.

      As a salesperson and ultimately as a Director of Sales, or as I like to call it a Sales Coach; I found the one thing that creates anxiety in every salesperson is PROSPECTING! These 10 letters can send even the most experienced, savvy salespeople into a re-prioritization mode. As soon as I finish these things on my To Do List, I’m going to start prospecting for new business. This anxiety is not a function of experience or the lack thereof. It is inherent in the human makeup. Prospecting deals with a range of emotions that many of us would rather not encounter. Rejection, frustration, and the feeling of running in place and not getting anywhere are all issues and emotions that give salespeople anxiety.

      Many times prospecting is unfairly linked to straight cold calling. Cold calling is the function of picking up the phone and calling the first name on the list, or the screen, and reading a script or making it

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