Sales prospecting is one of the more mentally taxing activities that a salesperson has to perform. Most salespeople love selling and interacting with prospects, but the activity of finding new prospects can often be very difficult and guaranteed to include some amount of rejection, and this can wear on any individual.
There are a few things that you can do to offset all of that and to improve your mental mindset when you are trying to generate leads and build up your pipeline.
Set aside time for sales prospecting
We can often dread and not look forward to prospecting, whether that be phone prospecting, networking, cold walking, etc. But if you schedule time with yourself for when you are going to perform the necessary activities, you can become more mentally prepared for the task at hand.
For example, you can schedule Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons for outbound phone prospecting. Or set a quota for yourself that you are going to go to two business networking events per week.
Become more value-aware
When performing sales prospecting, it can be easy for us to fall into the mental mindset that we are calling (bothering) the prospect and trying to take something from them. What I mean by “take something from them” is that we want them to buy our product and think about how much that will help us.
Yes, selling is the ultimate goal. But this is the weakest mindset to have. If you have heard of people being referred to as “givers” and “takers”, this is a “taker” mindset when we do this. And you may not realize that you do this, but it is very natural to fall into this way of thinking as you have sales targets, you have a commission that you can make, you have pressure to sell, etc. And now you are talking to someone who could possibly buy something, so you start to slip into the “taking” mindset.
But what we often lose sight of is that there is always some sort of value offered when a customer uses our product or service. We help them in some way or another. Since we help them, they need us. Since they need us, you can think of yourself more as a “giver” when you call them as you are calling to give your help (or find the prospects that need your help).
The key to being able to shift your mindset in this way is to always stay aware of the value that you offer. You help in some sort of way. Never lose sight of that when sales prospecting.
Track your activity and progress
Another way to improve your mindset is to track your activity and progress. A feeling of taking steps forward and being productive can feel good and this can help you to establish momentum and a more motivated mindset.
SalesScripter helps you to improve your mindset during sales prospecting.