The 8 Sales Prospecting Mindsets of Top Earners Pt 1: Plan for Success in Advance

Welcome to The Eight Mindsets of Top Sales Prospectors video series. Let’s start with planning for success in advance.

Now prospecting might not be something you had to be particularly adept at when the market was red hot. But in normal and certainly in tough markets, prospecting is critical.

Prospecting is one of those interesting things about sales because it is one of those make-or-break activities. Many salespeople will find prospecting uncomfortable, and because they find it uncomfortable, they’re not going to do it.

Our prospecting fortitude provides an opportunity to stand out. We always stand out when we embrace the discomforts and do things other people are unwilling to do. 

Great salespeople embrace that discomfort, and they run right through it. I’m going to suggest that one of the problems many salespeople have, whether it be prospecting or anything else, is getting stuck in their minds before they get stuck anywhere else.

Prospecting is uncomfortable. And because it’s uncomfortable, I’m going to think of about a thousand things that I could be doing other than prospecting. 

Here’s a tip, and this is one of those tips that super productive people follow, they have down and fully understand it. You need to plan for the discomfort and decide, in advance, how you will respond.

You’ll have the prospecting calls you’re supposed to make, right? So what do you do? The conversation with yourself may sound like this.

• Oh, I don’t want to make those. So I will do this (insert any activity other than prospecting here).
• I’m going to do this paperwork.
• I’m going to check the computer and social media for leads.

You’ve invested all this mental energy in procrastinating. It gets to the end of the day, and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to prospect now. I’ll hit it first thing in the morning.” Will you? How has that strategy worked in the past?

I’m suggesting the best time to think about prospecting is before you have to think about prospecting. If you know you’ll have prospecting time today, set it in your calendar. Set a very specific time, earlier in the day is better, and decide in advance how you will respond when the voice in your head says, “No, I don’t want to do this.”

The voice in your head will always give you a thousand reasons why you shouldn’t do it. But super successful salespeople remind themselves that’s the voice that everybody else is going to listen to. Not me. I will use that as leverage to lean into the discomfort and do it anyway.

Here’s the science behind that. Your brain is designed to do one thing above everything else, and that’s to keep you alive. When it senses a threat, it sends a signal to the rest of you that says run away. Our problem is that our brains often view discomfort and see it as a threat. Fight or flight processing kicks in.

If I wait to decide how I will handle that prospecting time that shows up on my calendar until it shows up, what’s going to happen? I’m going to feel uncomfortable, and then I’m going to tell myself, “I don’t want to do this.” My brain is going to say, Just run away.

If I decide before it’s time to prospect, what will happen? I can make that decision out of the logical side of my brain, not the emotional side. Remember, the emotional side will say, “Don’t do it.” Find an excuse, run away.

The logical side that we plan for in advance will say, If I lean into that discomfort before I’m faced with it, if I make that decision in advance to lean into that discomfort, to do it anyway, then my logical brain will say, this is the opportunity to stand apart where other salespeople are going to back away.

This is a mental game. Great salespeople understand that the technical side is the easy part if you can win the mental game.

We want to make a decision for success. We want to make a decision in advance to lean into our discomfort. And you know what happens when you lean into discomfort and keep leaning pretty soon, you bust right through your discomfort, and then you know where you’ll be? You’ll be in uncharted territory because everybody else is on the other side of the discomfort wall.

Embrace the discomfort of prospecting. It’s the number one secret to becoming that six-figure sales professional. 

We’ll continue with part two of our series next week. Until next time, learn more to earn more!