Pete’s take…
From time to time, many salespeople find themselves in a slump, wondering “why am I not closing deals like I was before?” Most of the time you can figure out why by looking back 60 to 90 days to see what you’ve been doing. You will likely see that 90 days ago was right in the middle of a holiday and you took time off because business was slow. Maybe you were too busy working in the business and not keeping up with your prospecting. During that time your prospecting slowed down to almost nothing.
Jeb Blount discusses the “30 Day Rule” in prospecting. He states that “the prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days”. The point is that in order to be on top of your game, you always need to be prospecting.
Fanatical Prospecting is one of the best sales books I have ever read. I love Jeb’s writing style. He is a no-nonsense guy who is honest about the challenges of cold calling and prospecting. He doesn’t offer a “silver bullet” approach to turn you into the next Brian Tracy. Jeb lays out a prospecting plan that requires hard work but returns solid dividends in the success column.
There are so many new claims by selling gurus that you don’t have to make cold calls anymore. Just subscribe to their new social marketing or email program and sales will come. Many salespeople buy into these programs because they hate picking up the phone and interrupting someone’s day with a prospecting call. Those calls are scary so they search for ways to sell using any method other than cold calling.
Jeb lays out prospecting methods that include social media, cold calling, emailing and even texting. He states that you will get your best results by combining all the different prospecting techniques to help you build familiarity, which in turn will lead to more conversations. I found this book to be both informative and motivating. I’m really not a sales nerd, but I had a hard time putting this book down. This is one I will keep in the bookshelf to read again.
Cheryl’s take…
I enjoyed this book from the first page as Jeb’s style is very direct – providing his points in a simple way that is super effective. He sprinkles relevant scenarios and sample talk tracks throughout the whole book which elevates it above many other sales books that simply talk about selling theories without providing much in the way of real examples.
Jeb lays out a detailed road-map for how to succeed in prospecting and gives readers not just a nudge but a push towards eliminating excuses. He lays bare all the lame rationales and explanations used by sub-par sales professionals and provides solid reasons for why sales professionals who are serious about success should get out from under the excuses and start re-directing that energy to the actual work of sales.
He then proceeds to describe that this work should include a wide variety of prospecting methods and stresses that no one single method produces the results of Presidents Club performers. Rather top performers combine cold-calling, warm-calling, networking, referrals and social media into a well-oiled machine that doesn’t lean on any one method by itself.
A detailed review of each method is provided, again with multiple examples that help you see how you could easily implement the technique yourself or within your team. If you think by virtue of its title this is an inside sales book, you’re wrong. Jeb does a great job of delineating what methods work well in with transactional sales versus how and when to apply various approaches in the enterprise environment, making it an all around good sales book.
A great read that sits on our “good material to reference” shelf.
