Selling in a Crisis

29Eat the Frog

Prospecting is the one activity that will have the greatest positive impact on the health of your pipeline, career, and income.

Prospecting is emotionally challenging because it requires you to interrupt strangers and face constant rejection. Few people enjoy being rejected.

It's human nature to procrastinate on things we don't enjoy. This is why so many sales professionals begin their sales day with trivial or important activities while pushing off prospecting for “later.”

The problem is, “later” never seems to come around, leaving these same reps to complain that they never have enough time to prospect and sell. It's a vicious cycle that can absolutely sink you in a crisis.

Frenchman Nicholas Chamfort advised people to “swallow a frog in the morning if you want to encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.” The biggest frog in your sales day is prospecting. This is the activity you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't jump on it first thing in the morning.

Frogs don't get more appetizing as the day goes on. The longer they sit there, the slimier and stinker they get. That's when the bargaining starts. Instead of just eating your frog and getting it over with, you make empty promises with yourself to eat twice as many frogs later.

It never works. Once you start procrastinating, you'll never catch up. As you push off prospecting, more tasks, problems, burning fires, and trivial BS move in to take its place. Your plate overflows with non-sales ...