Time Strategies: 3 Things You Never Want to Do

You may be shocked to learn the three things you should never do are exactly what you're told to do by your sales manager/mentor. But when you do these three things you're setting yourself up for an arduous struggle and, in all likelihood, failure. And that’s exactly why over 90% of the people entering the industry will fail in less than three years.

The first thing you never want to do that you’re told you have to do it cold call. It’s time to put that dog to bed. Cold calling has never been a high pay-off activity and now with the legal ramifications and people’s increased intolerance it’s an even worse thing to do.

When you cold call you immediately put yourself in the needy category. Why else would you be calling an absolute stranger begging them for an appointment? And that’s not the position you ever want to be in.

How much time does it take you to make those 100 cold calls you’re supposed to make? It takes hours. And at the end of the day you’re lucky if you’ve talked to 3 people and scheduled an appointment with one person who may or may not keep their appointment.

Then when you meet with that person you find they aren’t likely to do business with you because they’re defensive and don’t trust you. But you keep wasting your time and theirs chasing after them anyway. And how much time do you have invested in all this activity without any results to show for it?

The second thing you never want to do is hang out at chamber networking events. The reason is obvious. The only people at those events are other starving sales people who are desperate for a sale.

The third thing you never want to do is pitch someone. And your “presentation” is nothing more than a pitch designed to produce a manipulative sales conversation. People hate to be sold and your presentation further reinforces their belief that they can’t trust you.

But you have to get business, so how are you supposed to do that? Instead of spinning your wheels wasting your time on all the things you should never do learn how to do the things you should do and do them. That means you need to learn how to: identify with a specific group of people in a way that gets them to reach out to you, interact with your ideal prospects on their turf, start and build a connection based on mutual respect and trust, and hold a conversation with a prospect that helps them to buy.