Selling in a Crisis

23Do a Little Bit of Prospecting, Every Day

Japan was in ruins after World War II, and the nation had the task of cleaning up the devastation and overcoming the hopelessness and helplessness that had taken hold. In this moment of crisis, a movement developed called Kaizen. Kaizen revived the country, their spirit, and their commerce.

Kaizen in Japanese means “a change for continuous improvement.” In this case, it's a philosophy rooted in making small progress every day to improve your life and find success. Kaizen is based on the idea that it isn't so much about the grand changes and ideas that we have. Change is found in the small steps that add up to large-scale and lasting habits that lead to success.

After hitting rock bottom, the Japanese realized that thinking about the gravity of the destruction and what they had to do to overcome it could become paralyzing. The same is true of prospecting.

Thinking about the daunting task of building your pipeline in the middle of an economic crisis can be overwhelming and lead to procrastination and paralysis. On the other hand, when you break prospecting up into short, high-intensity sprints that you execute daily, it is much easier to feed and grow your pipeline.

Daily prospecting is one thing that you absolutely must do to outsell the crisis. Front loading each sales day with a little bit of prospecting has a cumulative impact. It builds like compound interest, giving you confidence, improving your messaging and objection turn-arounds ...