I had an amazing day last week – thought you might want to hear about it. To set the stage, in spite of the horrible economy we are experiencing, in the last 12 months I have prospected the largest number (yearly total) of leads in my career (May to May – 2009/2010). Further, just this week (on a Monday) I called my follow up list for the coming month (first time through) and secured 31 leads in a single day.
- To give that some perspective, I have been prospecting sales leads for over 20 years – and that is the best single day record of my career.
- My old record for leads in one day was 22.
- Around 19 years ago I got the idea in my head to see how many calls I could make in one day. It was during the month of December and one of my last calling days before taking a Christmas break.
- I remember making a total of 758 calls that day (between the hours of 8:00am – 5:00pm).
- I secured 22 leads in that single day.
This time it took me 272 calls to break my record. This is the case because my system for prospecting has become so developed over time. By that I mean that my list has become well developed. When I started out, my prospects were “colder.” Today, the list that I call my “follow up list” or “up-list” contains the names of many people who have either talked with me before, received letters from my company in the past, have heard our company’s name in the community, have met with us in the past, etc. We do very little (less than 5%) referral business. So, these people all started out as “cold” by traditional prospecting standards. Still, there are always a handful of newer, colder names on my list that are just timely follow ups.
So How Did This Happen? And How Could You Replicate My Results?
Why do I find myself where I am? What is important to note is that it was the discipline of cultivating a long term list of prospects that led me to where I find myself today in terms of prospecting sales leads.
I applied that discipline over the long haul to make the calls needed to find these prospects. I was smart enough (or lucky enough) to decide to take notes while I called and to keep those notes in a database that I could query (sort). Over time I sought to identify the better quality leads I talked to and mark them for future contact. I follow up with the better quality leads on a timely basis, and I am willing to go the extra mile to reach out to them. Lastly, though I take a long term perspective over all, when I call I focus on the short term perspective of current interest.
