Big Ideas

For someone who knew literally nothing about sales this was the best introduction I could have hoped for. It's a complete crash course in how to be successful at selling. The book covers some of the most important core concepts relevant to anyone working in sales or performing sales duties both at a tactical level and at a psychological level. Blount writes clearly and with a straightforward honesty that makes it easy to apply these ideas.

The most important concepts I found were:

• Your success in sales is dependent mostly on your ability to find prospects and to contact them. This is the foundation for everything.
• One of the biggest barriers to successful selling is that salespeople simply avoid the hard work of reaching out to prospects. They find lots of good excuses to avoid prospecting.
• Prospecting isn't fun or easy and never will be. You just have to get over it and do it if you want to be successful.
• Measure your prospecting activities. It's the only way to improve.
• Block off dedicated time to reach out to prospects and protect this time religiously. Do this during the "Golden Hours" when prospects are most likely to engage with you. 

Notes

I. The Case for Prospecting

• The Real Secret to Sustained Success
• ~"Superstars are relentless, unstoppable prospectors. They are obsessive about keeping their pipeline full of qualified prospects. They prospect anywhere and anytime - constantly turning over rocks looking for their next opportunity. They prospect day and night - unstoppable and always on. Fanatical!"
• ~"The brutal fact is the number one reason for failure in sales is an empty pipe, and the root cause of an empty pipeline is the failure to prospect."
• In Search of the Easy Button
• ~"It is critical that you awaken from the delusion that somehow you are going to be able to make prospecting easier and come to grips with the truth."
• Stop Wishing That Things Were
• ~"Here's the brutal truth: There is no easy button in sales. Prospecting is hard, emotionally draining work, and it is the price you have to pay to earn a high income."

II. Seven Mindsets of Fanatical Prospectors

Success Leaves Clues

• Optimistic and enthusiastic
• Competitive
• Confident
• Relentless
• Thirsty for knowledge
• System and efficient
• Adaptive and flexible

III. To Cold Call or Not

The Fine Art of Interrupting

• "If you want sustained success in your sales career, if you want to maximize your income, then you've got to interrupt prospects."
• "The only way to start a sales conversation with these high-value prospects is to interrupt them."

Stop Seeking the Easy Way Out

• Rejection and fear ... "the core reasons mediocre salespeople spend an inordinate amount of time finding excuses not to prospect rather than just doing it."

Just Afraid to Make the Call

• "Interrupting your prospect's day is a fundamental building block of robust sales pipelines. No matter your prospecting approach, if you don't interrupt relentlessly, your pipeline will be anemic."

IV. Adopt a Balanced Prospecting Methodology

The Fallacy of Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket

• "In sales, consistently relying on a single prospecting methodology, at the expense of others, consistently generates mediocre results."

Avoid the Lunacy of One Size Fits All

• "With few exceptions, the combination of multiple techniques and channels is the most effective path to building a winning pipeline."

V. The More you Prospect, The Luckier You Get

Three core laws of prospecting:

• The Universal Law of Need - "Desperation magnifies and accelerates failure"
• The 30-Day Rule - "The prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days."
• The Law of Replacement - If you have a 1/10 probability of closing a prospect, then if you close 1 deal you need to replace your pipeline with 10 more prospects. "You must [add new prospects] at a rate that matches or exceeds your closing ratio."

The Anatomy of a Sales Slump

• In a nutshell, finding other sales related activities to justify ignoring the grueling work of prospecting which creates a slump for your future self.

The First Rule of Sales Slumps

• " ... is when you are in one, start prospecting."

VI. Know Your Number

Elite Athletes Know Their Number

• "Efficiency is how much activity you are generating in the time block allotted for a particular prospecting activity."
• "Effectiveness is the ratio between activity and the outcome."
• Measure and then maximize both

You Cannot Be Delusional and Successful at the Same Time

• "The majority of salespeople don't track their numbers. Why? Because it's so much easier to delude themselves into thinking that they have made far more calls or prospecting touches than they have really made."

VII. The Three Ps That

• Procrastination
• Perfectionism
• Paralysis from Analysis

VIII. Time, The Great Equalizer of Sales

"The difference between top performers and all of the other salespeople who are picking crumbs up off the floor is top sales pros are masters at maximizing prime selling time for ... selling."

• "My primary objective is to generate awareness for how critical time management is to your success and income and, help you shift your mindset about how you schedule and manage time for prospecting and other sales activities."

Adopt a CEO Mindset

• Fanatical prospectors "believe that they and they alone are accountable for their own success or failure. They take complete responsibility and accountability for managing their time, territory, prospect database (CRM), and resources."

Protect the Golden Hours

• "The single biggest challenge for salespeople is keeping non-revenue generating activities from interfering with the Golden Hours."
• To protect these hours your choices are:
• ~Delude yourself
• ~Just say no
• ~Prioritize
• ~Do important non-sales activities before or after the Golden Hours
• ~Delegate

The Fine Art of Delegation

• "The desire to control everything that is happening with their customers and accounts is how many salespeople get themselves into trouble and cause themselves immeasurable stress."

Blocking Your Time Will Transform

Horstman's Corollary

• "Parkinson' Law states that work tends to expand to fill the time allotted for it. Horstman's Corollary is the converse. It describes how work contracts to fit into the time allowed."
• "Time blocking is transformational to sales people."

Stick to Your Guns

• Keep appointments with yourself. Don't let anyone interrupt your prospecting time.

Concentrate Your Power

• You suck at multitasking, everyone does.
• Consolidate your prospecting activities together into blocks so that you can focus.

Beware of the Ding

• Your phone and computer will distract you and suck away your time without you realizing it.

What Lurks in Your Inbox Can and Will Derail Your Sales Day

• "Email is the great time-sucker of the twenty-first century."
• "Take care of your prospecting block first, then manage e-mail."

Leverage the Platinum Hours

• "During the Golden Hours, time is money. Literally. To maximize sales productivity and your income, your total focus must be on prospecting and customer engagement activities."
• Use the rest of your time for all other activities:

Measure Your Worth

• Know how much your time is worth and learn when to pay for things or hire other people to do tasks that are not worth your time.

IX. The Four Objectives

Every prospecting interaction should have a clear objective and correspond to one of the core activities:

• Set an appointment
• Gather information and qualify
• Close a sale
• Build familiarity

Prospecting Is a Contact Sport

• "To be efficient you've got to get in as many prospecting touches as possible during each prospecting block."
• "Prospecting is not for building relationships, selling, or chatting up your buyer. It is for setting the appointment, qualifying, building familiarity, and when it makes, moving into the sales process right on the spot."

Set an Appointment

• "The most valuable activity in the sales process is a set appointment .. to be absolutely clear, an appointment is a meeting that is on your calendar and your prospects calendar; in other words, they are expecting you to show up in person or by phone, video call, or web conference at a specific time and date."

Gather Information and Qualify

• "Each day salespeople waste time, energy, and emotion swinging at ugly deals. Deals that are unprofitable, unqualified, no in the buying window, don't have a budget, don't have an identified decision maker, or because of contracts don't have the ability to buy."

Define the Strike Zone

• Define what a qualified prospect actually looks like.
• "If you don't define the strike zone, you will waste a lot of time chasing ugly deals."

Close the Sale

Build Familiarity

• "Familiarity plays an important role in getting prospects to engage."
• "Building familiarity is almost always a secondary or tertiary objective of a prospecting touch."
• "Savvy sales professionals create strategic prospecting campaigns (SPC) that cross-leverage prospecting channels to systematically build familiarity."

X. Leveraging the Prospecting Pyramid

Walk Like an Egyptian: Managing the Prospecting Pyramid

• "Salespeople who struggle view their prospect database as a square ... they treat every prospect exactly the same."
• Successful salespeople have a ranking of prospects:

1. Highly qualified and moving into the buying window
2. Hot inbound leads and referrals
3. Conquest prospects, highly targeted list of the best or largest opportunities in the area
4. Potential buying windows have ben identified, incomplete contact records for decision makers and influencers
5. Solid contact information, possibly information on decision makers and influencers
6. Everyone else you know little about

Powerful Lists Get Powerful

• "Being a more efficient and effective prospector begins and ends with an organized, targeted prospecting list."

XI. Own Your Database

Own It Like a CEO

• "There is no weapon or tool in your sales arsenal that is more important or impactful to your long-term income stream than your prospect database. Nothing."

A Trash Can or a Gold Mine

• "Put every detail about every account and every interaction with every account and contact in your CRM. make good, clear notes. Never procrastinate. Do not take shortcuts."

XII. The Law of Familiarity

"The more familiar a prospect is with you, your brand, and/or your company, the more likely they will be to" engage with you.

Prospecting Lubrication

• "Familiarity lubricates prospecting because it makes the prospect's decision to give you their time feel less risky."
• You won't have enough time to build familiarity with all prospects so be smart about who you invest time in building familiarity with."

The Five Levers of Familiarity

• Persistent and Consistent Prospecting
• Referrals and Introductions
• Networking
• Company and Brand Familiarity
• Personal Branding

XIII. Social Selling

Social Selling Is Not a Panacea

• "Contact and conversion rates from phone and e-mail dwarf conversion rates on social media. The social channel enhances, elevates, and sometimes accelerates your prospecting efforts. It certainly impacts familiarity. But it is not a replacement for focused and deliberate outbound prospecting efforts."

Social Selling Is Not Selling

• "The bottom line is people don't want to be pitched or "sold" on social media. they prefer to connect, interact, and learn. For this reason, the social channel is better suited to building familiarity, lead nurturing, research, nuanced inbound prospecting, and trigger-event awareness."

Choose the Right Social Channels

• "Go where your prospects hang out."

The Objectives of Social Prospecting

1. Personal branding
2. Building familiarity
3. Inbound prospecting Through Insight and Education
4. Leveraging Insight and Education to Power Up Strategic Prospecting
5. Trigger-Event and Buying-Cycle Awareness
6. Research and Information Gathering
7. Outbound Prospecting

The Five Cs of Social Selling

• Connecting
• Content Creation
• Content Curation
• Conversion
• Consistency

XIV. Message Matters

"Be careful not to over complicate things. Your prospecting message is designed for one purpose: to quickly persuade your prospect to give you their time."

What you Say and How You Say

• How you say what you say matters as much as what you say, the tone, inflection, speed, pitch and emotional wrapping of your words etc.
• In person this includes the way you look, body language etc.

Enthusiasm and Confidence

• These matter, act like it even if you don't feel like it.

What you Say

• "Your prospecting message must be quick, simple, direct, and relevant."
• "Prospects are going to agree to give up their valuable time for their reasons, not yours. The lower the risk to them for giving up their time, the more likely they'll be willing to give it up."
• Focus on a business objective that's measured
• Disrupt the status quo
• Offer proof or evidence

WIIFM - The Power of Because

• Give your prospect a reason to meet with you and use the word "because."

Bridging to the Because

• "Bridging solutions to your prospects problems using their language, not yours, is one of the core disciplines of sales."

The Secret to Crafting Powerful Bridges

• Put yourself in the shoes of your prospect and empathize with them on an emotional level

Ask for What You Want

• Three steps to asking

1. Ask with confidence and assume you'll get what you want
2. Shut up.
3. Be prepared to deal with the reflex responses, brush-offs, and objections.

Assume You'll Get What you

• "When salespeople demonstrate confidence and ask assertively for what they want, prospects say yes about 70 percent of the time."

Shut Up

• "The hardest part of asking is learning to ask and shut up."
• "When you fail to manage the disruptive emotions that are triggered by silence ... you attempt to overcome objections that have not even surfaced, over explain yourself, offer your prospect a way out, and start blabbing on an don about your products features and benefits, your company ... until the prospect who was ready to say yes gets talked into saying no by you."
• Get to yes fast.
• Get to no fast.
• Get to maybe fast.

XV. Telephone Prospecting Excellence

Nobody Answers a Phone That's Not Ringing

• "The statistics don't lie. We see between a 15 and 80 percent contact rate on the phones depending on the industry, product and role level of the contact."

The Telephone Is, Has Always Been, and Will Continue to Be the Most Powerful Sales Prospecting Tool

• "The telephone is also more effective than e-mail, social, and text because when you are actually speaking to another human being, there is a higher probability that you'll set appointments, sell stuff and gather qualifying information."

Nobody Likes it; Get Over it

• "It will always be uncomfortable picking up the phone and calling people you don't know. It is just not a natural thing to do. There will always be calls and even days when you fumble your words and become embarrassed. You will always get more rejection than acceptance."

Most Salespeople have Never Been Taught How to Use the Phone

• "You are going to get rejected a lot on the phone because statistically you will generate more real-time interactions with prospects than through any other prospecting channel"
• "Most of your calls will go to voice mail."
• "Most the reason that you are frustrated with the phone and find making telephone prospecting calls abhorrent is because you or the people who taught you how to prospect are overcomplicating" it.
• "Nobody really likes telephone prospecting. No matter what I teach you, you are probably still going to hate the phone."

The Ultimate Key to Success Is The Scheduled Phone Block

• "Fanatical prospectors set up daily telephone blocks of one to two hours."

The Five-Step Simple Telephone

• "Your call must be structured so that you get to the point fast - in 10 seconds or less - and sound like an authentic professional rather than a scripted robot"
• "You also need a process that is consistent and repeatable."
• Framework
• ~Get their attention by using their name
• ~Identify yourself
• ~Tell them why you are calling
• ~Bridge - give them a because
• ~Ask for what you want

Leaving Effective Voice Mail Messages

• "An effective voicemail should help you achieve at least one of two objectives:"
• ~Get a callback from a high-value prospect
• ~Build familiarity with a high-value prospect
• "The callback rate on voice mail messages is very low." Only do this for high value or conquest prospects.

Five-Step Voice Mail Framework

• Identify yourself
• Say your phone number twice
• Tell them the reason for calling
• Give them a reason to call you back
• Repeat your name and say your phone number twice

Timing Teleprospecting Calls

• "Timing calls is the greatest excuse and cop-out for salespeople who don't want to prospect by phone."
• Just do it.

XVI. Turning Around  RBOS Reflex Responses, Brush-Offs, and Objections

Rejection Won't Roll Off Your Back

• It's ok, it means you're a human with a pulse and feelings.

Planning for the RBO (Reflex Responses, Brush-Offs, Objections)

• "The real secret to gaining control over the conversation when faced with an RBO is planning for them in advance." Prepare a list of common RBOs and script out your response. Then practice the response until it sounds natural.

The Turnaround Framework

• Never ever, ever argue with your prospect.
• Disrupt their expectations, agree with them and go along with whatever they say
• Never say "I understand"
• Ask again

When the Horse is Dead, Dismount

• When a prospect is a jerk "you project your feelings on your prospect and make up a story in your head about they said, did or thought after the hung up ... meanwhile, the prospect doesn't even remember you."
• It's going to hurt but you have to move on

XVII.  The Secret Lives of Gatekeepers

Seven Keys for Dealing with

• Be likeable
• Use please, please
• Be transparent
• Connect
• Hold the cheese
• Ask for help
• Change the game
• ~Call early or late
• ~Leverage social
• ~Meet them in person
• ~Send an email
• ~Send a handwritten note

The Calling-Other-Extensions

• Call random extensions, try to build rapport with a random person to get the right extension

The Salespeople-Help-Salespeople

• Ask a salesperson at the company for the right information

The Go-Around-Back Hack

• Literally go around to the back of the physical venue and try to connect with someone who can help, "approach them in a transparent, nonaggressive way"
• "In sales persistence always wins. Always."

XVIII. In-Person Prospecting

Limited Application of the In-Person Prospecting Call

• IPP (in person prospecting) is very inefficient and "should only be used to supplement and complement the other forms of prospecting."

The Five-Step Hub-and-Spoke

• Plan your IPPs around preset appointments
• Leverage your CRM to develop a list of prospects close by.
• Plot three to five prospects on the map around your appointment
• Develop the most efficient driving route
• Give yourself time between appointments to call on prospects face to face

Preparing for Effective In-Person Prospecting

• Objectives
• ~Qualifying
• ~Making appointments
• ~Sales conversations
• ~Building familiarity
• ~Maximizing your sales day
• ~Learning your territory
• Planning
• ~Research
• ~Personalize your approach
• ~Develop objective for each call
• ~Be prepared to close
• ~Log notes in CRM
• Framework
• ~Approach with confidence
• ~Identify yourself and say why you are there
• ~Gather information
• ~Ask for what you want
• ~Turn around objections

Put Your Sales Goggles On

• Look for opportunities everywhere

XIX.  E-Mail Prospecting

The Three Cardinal Rules of E-Mail Prospecting

• Rule #1: Your Email Must Get Delivered
• ~Don't send bulk e-mail
• ~Avoid attaching images
• ~Avoid hyperlinks (include the whole url)
• ~Avoid attachments
• ~Stop spammy words and phrases
• ~Don't send to many people in the same company at one time
• ~Don't send too many e-mails to the same person
• ~Scrub bounces from your email list
• ~Be careful with sensitive industries
• Rule #2: Your Email Must Get Opened
• ~Familiarity gets your email opened
• ~Your subject line must scream "open me"
• ~Common Subject Line Problems
• ~~Too long
• ~~Include questions
• ~~They're impersonal or boring
• Rule #3: Your E-Mail Must Convert
• ~It must be personalized and tailored to the recipient

A Good Prospecting Email Begins with a Great Plan

• "Bad e-mails destroy your brand equity, credibility, and image"
• Good emails
• ~Consider your audience
• ~Determine your method
• ~Tailor your message to the audience
• ~Define your desired outcome

The Four Elements of an Effective Prospecting Email

• Hook - "Get attention with a compelling subject line and opening sentence/statement"
• Relate - "Demonstrate that you get them and their problem. Show empathy and authenticity."
• Bridge - "Connect the dots between their problem and how you can help them."
• Ask - "Be clear and straightforward about the action you want them to take and make it easy for them to do so."

Practice, Practice, Practice

The Best Time to Send E-Mails

• Is whenever works best for your particular situation
• For most B2B it's usually in the morning

Pause Before Your Press "Send"

• Write
• Step away
• Edit
• Send

XX. Text Messaging

Texting as a Business Tool Is Accelerating

Familiarity Is Everything with Text

• "The probability of your text message converting - compelling your prospect to take action - increases exponentially if your text comes after contact through another channel."
• "Text messaging works best as an integrated part of a larger prospecting system and strategy rather than a standalone channel."
• "People are averse to getting random text messages from people they don't know - especially salespeople."

Use Text to Anchor Conversations at Networking Events

• Send someone a text AFTER you've met them in person and obtained their contact info

Use Text Following Trigger Events

• "A trigger event is a disruption in the status quo that may compel your prospect to act."
• "Make sure the prospect knows who you are before sending this type of message."

Use Text to Nurture Prospects

• Send your best, most helpful, valuable information to high value prospects via text without a specific ask
• These text messages can be "appreciated because they are valuable to [the prospect] and personal."

Use Text to Create Opportunities for Engagement

• Short messages to make them feel important, congratulate them, or say something nice, acknowledge them
• They must be sincere

Seven Rules for Structuring Effective Text Prospecting Messages

• Identify yourself
• Message matters
• Be direct - be brief
• Avoid abbreviations
• Use transparent links
• Edit and proofread
• Know your numbers

XXI. Developing Mental

It Takes Grit - You Have to Grind to Shine

• ~Dimensions of mental toughness in salespeople according to Dr. Chris Croner and Richard Abraham
• ~~Optimism
• ~~Competitiveness
• ~~Need for achievement

Four Pillars of Mental Toughness

• Desire
• Mental Resilience
• Physical Resilience
• Feed you Attitude

When You Are on Top, Attack

• "There is no time for complacency. You cannot afford the luxury of comparing yourself to those behind you. Achieving by dumbing down your expectations is just plain stupid."

XXII. Eleven Words That Changed My Life

• "When it's time to go home, make one more call."

XXIII. The Only Question That Really Matters

• "How bad do you want it?"