by Will Rotondi
After you’ve heard no enough times from your prospects, it’s easy to lose faith in the system. If that’s turned you into a prospecting procrastinator, it’s okay to admit – trust me, there are plenty of them out there.
But I’m willing to bet there are a couple of other psychological factors that are at play:
- We live in a world of instant connection.
- We have shorter attention spans.
Both of these mean that we’re more prone to expect instant gratification and results. When we don’t get these, we don’t see value and we want to move on.
So how do you get out of your prospecting rut when your brain is fighting against you? Shift your behavior. Forbes would tell you that beating procrastination isn’t about any active mental reasoning. It’s about programming yourself into a new routine.
Remove distractions in the workplace. It’s easy to surf the web, engage with a coworker, or respond to other emails while you’re in the middle of prospecting. Don’t – these require you to take more time to get back into the rhythm of what you were doing before the interruption. Block off time specifically to focus on your prospect outreach.
Pace yourself. Spend 30 minutes in the morning checking and sending email to your prospects, then take a break to get your mental energy back. Go on to the next task. Make sure to check your email again in the afternoon.
Establish daily or weekly goals. Our President, Erika, considers each day a success when she can recognize three positive results in her prospecting, whether someone mentions a potential interest in the near future, someone agrees to a phone call, someone agrees to a walkthrough of our prospecting automation, or someone is ready for a proposal.
Now that you recognize what could be holding up your efforts, take time to adjust your prospecting behavior… starting tomorrow.
