Looking to make sales easier? According to sales expert Jeb Blount, taking shortcut in sales leads to mediocre results. To consistently close deals, it takes a lot of cold calling, meetings, personalized communication, and follow-ups. Even then, it can be challenging to achieve your sales targets. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t find a successful approach to getting new business. After refining his unique selling style over the years, Jeb Blount shares advice and techniques on how to improve sales productivity. In our summary and review of Blount’s book “Fanatical Prospecting,” we’ll explore his ideas, recommend who the book is best suited for, and share our honest thoughts on whether it’s worth reading.
Fanatical Prospecting Summary
Jeb Blount uses insights from his long career to show us how to find clients, start conversations, and maintain a steady flow of potential customers. We break down his advice into 4 main parts.
1. Why Prospecting is an important part of Sales
Importance and Benefits of Prospecting
Great salespeople don’t wait to be told to contact prospects. Instead, they actively seek them out through multiple channels, such as phone calls, emails, and networking. The enduring mantra of the fanatical prospector is “one more call.”
This enthusiasm leads sales superstars to develop a consistent routine, and maintain a steady flow of opportunities in their sales pipeline, resulting in higher revenue for the business and for themselves.
Four Objectives of Prospecting
To be effective at prospecting, you need to know what you want and ask for it. Whether you are calling, emailing, cold calling, or networking at events, it is important to have a specific goal for each prospecting effort. These goals will vary depending on the industry and solution areas, but they generally involve:
- Set up a time that works for both of you to meet.
- Collect information and figure out which deals are the best: Consider prospects that are profitable, qualified, ready to buy, with a budget, and someone who can make the decision.
- Seal the deal by finding the right moments to engage the buyer and make your move at the perfect time.
- Build Familiarity: Stay in touch.
It’s important to keep prospecting efforts consistent. Each new prospecting effort should build on the previous one to address the prospect’s changing challenges and position your solution as a natural step towards solving their problems.
2. Winning Mindsets for Success
Seven Mindsets of Fanatical Prospectors
Successful prospectors share similar positive traits. By gaining these qualities, you are likely to achieve positive results
- Optimistic and enthusiastic. They are optimistic about keeping their sales pipeline full and enthusiastic about obtaining great results from prospects.
- Competitive. They do whatever it takes to stay ahead of their peers.
- Confident. They confidently take on their prospecting efforts, expecting to win over customers.
- Relentless. They are persistent in their efforts to reach their goals.
- Thirsty for knowledge. They eagerly seek out opportunities to learn more about their job.
- Systemic and efficient. They prioritize tasks to achieve maximum productivity.
- Adaptive and flexible. They have situational awareness and can respond and adapt to any circumstances.
Developing Mental Resilience: 4 pillars of mental toughness
So, you’ve learned the basics of effective prospecting – but how can you keep up the momentum to do it consistently? According to Blount, the four pillars of mental toughness are:
• Desire to achieve: Use your aspiration for increased earnings to motivate you to outline and record goals clearly.
• Mental Resilience: Continuously dedicate time to self-improvement to expand your understanding, gain perspective, and refine your abilities.
• Outlearn: Commit to outlearning your peers—it will result in you earning more than them.
• Physical resilience: Embracing fitness helps improve your overall well-being and enhances mental resilience.
3. Tools and Strategies for Effective Prospecting
COMMUNICATION CHANNELS
In sales, if you rely on just one prospecting communication channel, you will likely fail. Instead, it’s important to customize your prospecting strategies based on how a specific industry, organization, product, region, or tenure will best respond to them. To improve long-term performance, use multiple prospecting channels such as phone prospecting, text messaging, social selling, and emails.
Is cold calling still effective?
Although your biggest prospects will probably not be interested in responding to inbound marketing efforts, you can still reap rewards from cold calling. Blount encourages prospectors to make that call, walk through that door, or send that email or text. After all, if we want sustained sales success, then we have to interrupt our qualified prospect. It may not always work on the first try, but cold-calling is still a proven way to eventually start a sales conversation with prospects.
STRATEGY AND MANAGEMENT
Regular Prospecting Leads to Better Results
When it comes to sales, the more action you take, the more confident and success you will experience. The more you reach out to potential customers, the more high-quality opportunities you can create. This turns what might seem like luck into predictable outcomes. By consistently reaching out to real prospects, you reduce feelings of doubt and fear, and foster a proactive mindset that keeps your sales pipeline full. Competent salespeople keep engaging in prospecting activities, understanding that the prospecting they do in 30 days will pay off 90 days later.
Knowing Your Numbers
Carefully track your sales activities and results. By understanding the impact of what you put into your pipeline, you can adjust your strategies to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. This includes keeping tabs on your activity levels, conversion rates, and closing ratios to make data-driven decisions.
Time Management
Sales superstars think like CEOs, prioritizing the organization’s best interests and setting aside uninterrupted time for specific tasks. Blount introduces 2 concepts to help us manage time effectively.
• “Golden Hours” are specific time blocks dedicated to direct prospecting or sales activities, such as making calls, qualifying leads, gathering information, presenting, or closing deals. Blount recommends spending an hour on telephone prospecting calls and another hour on email and social prospecting.
• “Platinum Hours” are dedicated to preparatory and administrative tasks that support your prospecting efforts, like making lists of prospects, researching leads, or plan your prospecting strategy. These can be done before or after your Golden Hours.
TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY
Use the Prospecting Pyramid to your Advantage
Great salespeople think of their prospect database as a pyramid. At the bottom, there are tons of prospects they don’t know much about other than a company name and maybe some contact info. The goal with these prospects is to move them up the pyramid by gathering info and starting the qualifying process. At the very top are highly qualified prospects who are getting ready to buy. These are the top-priority prospects and should be at the top of a salesperson’s daily prospecting list.
CRM Utilization
It is important to maintain a well-organized CRM system. By consistently recording all details about each account and interaction, salespeople ensure they have a complete view of their prospects and customers. This approach helps in building strong relationships, making informed decisions, and ultimately driving long-term success.
4. Overcoming Challenges
Turning Around Reflex Responses, Brush-Offs, and Objections
Earlier in this article, we discussed how phone calls can be a great way to connect with potential customers. However, many of us feel anxious about making calls because we’re unsure how the other person will react. This anxiety can be even worse when we get responses like “We are not interested,” “Call me later,” or “Doesn’t work for me.”
Blount gives us 3 steps to help win over such situations.
i. Anchor: Share information that convinces the potential customer there’s really nothing to worry about:
Prospect: “I’m not interested”
Prospector: “Many of our clients felt the same way initially but found value in our solution after a quick five-minute chat.”
ii. Disrupt: Say something that surprises your potential prospect about salespeople. Don’t try to argue with them, just agree with them:
Prospect: “I’m not interested”
Prospector: “Honestly, I used to feel the same way until I realized how much value the right solutions can bring.”
iii. Ask: Re-ask them for their commitment.
Bad Habits in Prospecting: The 3Ps Slowing Your Progress
To make the most of your prospecting efforts, it’s important to identify and address common bad habits that can slow your progress. Blount refers to these as the three P’s.
Procrastination
Remember to prospect every day to stay ahead of the competition. It’s easy to put it off, but consistency is key to getting the best results.
Perfectionism
Overly thinking about making mistakes or not meeting your organization’s expectations can have destructive consequences. It can lead to demotivation and mental disorders like anxiety, ultimately hindering our ability to get the job done. Jeb Blount advises that it’s better to achieve success through trial and error than to strive for perfect mediocrity.
Paralysis
When prospecting, we can’t be completely sure about the outcome. If we focus too much on uncertainties, it can stop us from taking the first step. Blount encourages us to just go for it and see what happens.
Fanatical Prospecting Book Review
“Fanatical Prospecting” is a must-read for sales professionals who want to master prospecting and boost their sales. However, the book’s impact on you will depend on your sales experience.
If you’re a sales newbie, you’ll find valuable information on the basics of sales, including phone and in-person cold calling, social selling, and prospecting time management. Furthermore, the book focuses primarily on mindset and inspiration, which can increase motivation, confidence, and productivity.
On the other hand, Fanatical Prospecting may provide less value for experienced professionals looking for advanced negotiation tips or information on different prospecting methods and structuring. So, while considered one of the best sales books, its worth depends on what prospecting skills you want to hone.
Who Should Read Fanatical Prospecting
If you’re a prospector having trouble keeping a steady flow of qualified leads or dealing with rejection and putting things off, this book gives great tips to up your prospecting game and find more success in sales. Apart from sales professionals, entrepreneurs, sales leaders, small business owners, and anyone involved in bringing in new business can learn from the practical strategies in the book.
Other Recommended Resources
We can all get better at turning sales leads into customers with knowledge. And what better way to enhance our knowledge than by reading books that blend information on processes and techniques to enhance your sales efficiency? From learning how to identify personality types to building rapport and influencing people, we recommend the following books to help you on your journey to becoming an expert sales person:
Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman: explores strategies for turning one-time buyers into lifelong customers by providing an exceptional customer experience during the first 100 days.
Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini: delves into the concept of setting the stage for influence by priming people to be receptive to a message before they even encounter it.
Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Uryr: offers a principled negotiation approach that focuses on mutual interests and collaborative problem-solving to achieve win-win agreements.
$100M Offers by Alex Hormozi: provides a blueprint for creating irresistible offers that attract and convert customers, helping entrepreneurs and businesses scale to $100 million in sales.
About the Author of Fanatical Prospecting
Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations is written by Jeb Blount. He is a sales expert, keynote speaker, and the author of 15 Best-Selling Books on Sales and Business. He is also the founder and CEO of a sales training and consulting company that has helped many businesses improve their sales.
Blount’s journey to becoming a sales expert began in his hometown of Ohio, where he learned the value of hard work early. He studied business at the University of Cincinnati and gained valuable experience in various sales roles, refining his distinctive sales approach that led to his remarkable success.
Fanatical Prospecting Quotes
“There is no easy button in sales. Prospecting is hard, emotionally draining work, and it is the price you have to pay to earn a high income.”
“The enduring mantra of the fanatical prospector is: One more call.”
“Mediocrity is like a broke uncle. Once he moves into your house, it is nearly impossible to get him to leave.”
“Effective delegation begins with effective communication.”
“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.”
“Perfectionism is highly correlated with fear of failure”
“It is no different in sales. Elite salespeople, like elite athletes, track everything. You will never reach peak performance until you know your numbers and use those numbers to make directional corrections.”
