For those who are intimately involved in my life and business, you know I am looking to not just grow, but exponentially scale.   It is time, there is opportunity, and I can really help a whole lot of people.

Side note and shameless plug:  I help businesses with blogging and social media.

To be completely honest, I have never had an actual sales system, and can now see the problem that causes.  I have built my business through organic search, social media (hello LinkedIn), and a few other streams of potential clients.  Nothing consistent and no actual sales.  Usually a prospect reaches out to me and we have a short conversation where I try to solve all their problems, I give them a few tips and then never follow-up…I rarely followed up even after I send a proposal.

What is my sales close rate?  No clue.

Moving forward I am organizing the multiple prospect lists I have started over the years (include some napkin notes) and have committed to learning all that I need to about sales – afterall, they didn’t teach me this in PhD school.

I recently read Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blout and I found it worthy of a post.  Afterall, I took a few pages of notes so I might as well get a blog post out of it!  Here are my big take-a-ways:

1. The whole idea of being fanatical is an interesting one….relentless and leave no stone unturned…I can see that is a word I want to associate with this process.
2. Early on he mentions the importance of interrupting the prospect in some way to catch their attention and stand out.
3. I was thrilled he spent time talking about the Law of Attraction.  It is so true that what you focus on, where you put your mental energy, well that is exactly what you are going to get.
4. When you have any sales process you need one (maybe a few) KPI’s (key performance indicators) that should be tracked – fanatically of course.
5. I also liked his suggestion of a sales power hour.  Shut off all other distractions and just work on it.
6. There are steps to the sales process – you need to find a prospects pain, gather information and qualify them to make sure they are a good fit for you.  Know their plan for actually buying and then nurture them as needed.
7. There are some parts of the sales process that no one likes but you have to go through it – he calls this “just eat the frog.”
8. You must be an elite athelete completely prepared. This is so true.

He wrapped up asking you to explore the question “How bad do you want this?”  And of course to that you must also be able to then structure how you do things to go and get it.

Overall, I would say that if you are on a quest to tighten up, develop, or overhaul your sales system this is a book that should be added to your list of required reading.

For those who are intimately involved in my life and business, you know I am looking to not just grow, but exponentially scale.   It is time, there is opportunity, and I can really help a whole lot of people.

Side note and shameless plug:  I help businesses with blogging and social media.

To be completely honest, I have never had an actual sales system, and can now see the problem that causes.  I have built my business through organic search, social media (hello LinkedIn), and a few other streams of potential clients.  Nothing consistent and no actual sales.  Usually a prospect reaches out to me and we have a short conversation where I try to solve all their problems, I give them a few tips and then never follow-up…I rarely followed up even after I send a proposal.

What is my sales close rate?  No clue.

Moving forward I am organizing the multiple prospect lists I have started over the years (include some napkin notes) and have committed to learning all that I need to about sales – afterall, they didn’t teach me this in PhD school.

I recently read Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blout and I found it worthy of a post.  Afterall, I took a few pages of notes so I might as well get a blog post out of it!  Here are my big take-a-ways:

1. The whole idea of being fanatical is an interesting one….relentless and leave no stone unturned…I can see that is a word I want to associate with this process.
2. Early on he mentions the importance of interrupting the prospect in some way to catch their attention and stand out.
3. I was thrilled he spent time talking about the Law of Attraction.  It is so true that what you focus on, where you put your mental energy, well that is exactly what you are going to get.
4. When you have any sales process you need one (maybe a few) KPI’s (key performance indicators) that should be tracked – fanatically of course.
5. I also liked his suggestion of a sales power hour.  Shut off all other distractions and just work on it.
6. There are steps to the sales process – you need to find a prospects pain, gather information and qualify them to make sure they are a good fit for you.  Know their plan for actually buying and then nurture them as needed.
7. There are some parts of the sales process that no one likes but you have to go through it – he calls this “just eat the frog.”
8. You must be an elite athelete completely prepared. This is so true.

He wrapped up asking you to explore the question “How bad do you want this?”  And of course to that you must also be able to then structure how you do things to go and get it.

Overall, I would say that if you are on a quest to tighten up, develop, or overhaul your sales system this is a book that should be added to your list of required reading.