31: Prospecting- Part 1

Prospecting is hard. Whether it takes place from the boardwalk in your teens, the bar in your twenties, or the desk in your career, the challenge and principles remain largely the same.

We’ve all at some point had to summon the courage and unexpectedly initiate a connection when rejection had a higher probability than acceptance. The relationships you’ve acquired throughout your life and career has to come from some type of prospecting. We’ve all felt the invigorating joy when it’s been successful, and all felt the uncomfortable cringe when it hasn’t gone well.

With that said, after working primarily with warm inbound leads throughout my career at Vanguard and being in a serious relationship throughout my twenties, I’ve had minimal cold prospecting reps over the past decade. I’ve rarely had to summon the courage it requires to approach the table of girls at the bar, or call a prospective client out of the blue. I’ve rarely had to practice my approach to build instant engagement and credibility. So when my new role at work required the courage and skill set to call financial advisors and quickly win their trust and a share of their portfolios, I needed to learn how to do it well…quickly.

So in order to take the butterflies out of my stomach, the chatter out of my head, the marbles out of my mouth, and the cringe out of the interaction, I turned to an expert whom has prospected day and night for the better half of a decade. My buddy Chris, a living legend at Salesforce.com and once the most eligible bachelor in Manhattan’s East Village (until a few months ago), hooked me up with some sound advice. In all of Chris’ years of prospecting experience, he’s learned from personal success stories, epic failures, and seeing he and his own friends crash and burn in between.

Overall, he’s found that the skill is really no different in sales than it is in social situations. Chris approached girls at Bowery 310 the same that he approaches small businesses in need of a better CRM solution. So when I asked him to help me out with the prospecting part of my role, he gave me five rules that everyone should follow.

Stay tuned. For the sake of time, (I have to do my Villanova homework and take care of my child), I will share how I learned his five rules of selling in Part 2. All I will say for now is that applying these rules has helped me get better with each call.