Mr. Sales Prospect: Its Not You It’s Me….
No matter your situation, telling someone it’s over is never an easy thing to do. Those in the industry would agree that teleprospecting requires a certain mental make-up. Out of 105 calls a day, I generally have 15 quality conversations and out of those fifteen conversations, only three are actually interested. Similar to the world of dating, there are certain standards I live by and with those standards comes, unfortunately, deal breakers.
I recently went out for dinner with a gentleman that I was pretty excited about. On the surface, he seemed like my tall, dark, and handsome Prince Charming. Everything was going great, until it came time to order dinner and he took it upon himself to order for me! This, for me, was a deal breaker and I had to qualify this one out. In my role as a teleprospector, I call into shipping departments for large enterprise accounts. Similarly to my dating analogy, when the conversation starts rolling and I find out there is only a handful of shipments per day, rather than hundreds, this is the deal breaker that disqualifies the opportunity.
It seems to happen all too fast; you are having a quality conversation with a prospect that seems very engaged and interested and then, they say something that disqualifies them. We all wish every opportunity could be a perfect match, but the sad truth is, there are times when you must go your separate ways. That’s the moment you have to tell yourself that things could never progress and a marriage with your solution isn’t in the cards.
One thing my mother always told me is, “you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your Prince Charming.” Just like dating, in the world of teleprospecting, you must move on to the next conversation with an open mind. After a lot of hard work, you will find your Prince Charming, or in the world of teleprospecting, a qualified opportunity.