Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling

5

The More You Prospect, the Luckier You Get

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

—Dale Carnegie

The unrelenting daily imperative for every salesperson is keeping the pipeline full of qualified prospects.

Top sales professionals spend as much as 80 percent of their time on prospecting and qualifying activities for one important reason: They want to get up to the plate often and put together a consistent string of singles, doubles, triples, and a few home runs.

There are three core laws of prospecting that, when heeded, will ensure that you are moving a steady stream of prospects into the pipe:

1. The Universal Law of Need
2. The 30-Day Rule
3. The Law of Replacement

In this chapter, we discuss the implications of these universal laws for success in sales. You will also learn why ignoring these laws causes sales slumps and how to get out of a slump if you find yourself in one.

The Universal Law of Need

It is when pipelines are empty that salespeople find themselves face to face with the Universal Law of Need. The Universal Law of Need governs desperation. It states that the more you need something, the less likely it is that you will get it. This law comes into play in sales when lack of activity has left your pipeline depleted.

When all of your hope for survival rests on one, two, or even a handful of accounts, the probability of failure increases exponentially.

Consider ...