There aren’t many certainties in selling. What works well for one person can be a dead end for another, and what looks like a sure sale can easily deteriorate into a missed opportunity. One thing you can count on, however, is that a lack of strong, qualified leads will always be a stumbling block on the way to new business.

In that way, prospecting and lead generation are somewhat unique activities. While you can be a strong presenter, closer, or negotiator, none of that will ever matter if you don’t have enough leads to work with. And yet, coming up with a full sales pipeline is a constant challenge for sellers in every field and industry.

Here are a few of the common reasons why and the keys to getting past them.

Prospecting and selling are different skills: Great salespeople aren’t always great lead generators. They may be fantastic account managers, or perfect when it comes to closing warm leads, but struggle to find new opportunities from scratch.

Nobody likes awkward conversations: There are entire books and seminars devoted to “cold call reluctance,” and they all come down to the same thing: nobody likes calling strangers and asking for business. Most of us don’t enjoy receiving those calls, and so you certainly don’t relish making them!

A full pipeline can lead to an empty cupboard: When do sellers concentrate most on prospecting? When they don’t have enough sales opportunities in the works. The moment they do, they cast prospecting aside for activities that are more enjoyable.  Then it’s only a matter of time before they’re back at square one – with no new leads to pursue.

Looking at this short list, it’s easy to see why sellers have so much trouble finding enough leads. Prospecting and lead generation just don’t fit in with most of our skill sets and motivations.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome these prospecting challenges!

The real secret to beating them – and ensuring a steady flow of new business in your pipeline – is in understanding that the keys to prospecting are discipline and the right message.

The need for discipline, as often as it comes up in sales, is relatively straightforward: you just have to commit yourself to prospecting on a fixed, regular schedule and be accountable to it.

There’s no secret.

You simply have to understand that it works over the long term, start doing it, and keep going even when your pipeline seems full. Don’t stop!

Because this is so important, a key component of any successful selling strategy has to be monitoring and accountability. It’s up to you, either as the seller or person in charge of overseeing sales, to be sure that daily, weekly, and quarterly targets are hit. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before you run out of leads.

Having the right message is just as critical.

One reason so many of us hate receiving prospecting calls is that we don’t really trust the sellers on the other end. In other words, we get the distinct feeling that they’re more interested in our money than our needs.

But there’s no rule that says that’s how you have to make your calls and introductions.

Instead of being “just another seller,” distinguish yourself by finding out exactly why your customers do business with you. What do they love about you? How have your solutions changed their business?

Use that information to create a genuine message. Doing so not only makes you more comfortable with the process of finding and approaching new potential clients. It also allows you to start better conversations, ones that are focused on prospects’ needs, and the value you can bring them, rather than your offerings.

Prospecting has been a challenge for sellers since the invention of commerce. By focusing on discipline and the right message you can keep a steady flow of new business coming in like clockwork.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert and author of the award winning book “Selling Against the Goal” and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the Small and Midmarket Business (SMB) segment. Ms. Lee is a frequent speaker at national sales meetings and association events. To find out more about the author, read her latest articles, or to subscribe to her newsletter visit www.klagroup.com or call +1 303.741.6636.

Your prospects are now doing more with less. They’re doing the job of several people and are more stressed out than ever and that means that prospects are much less easily reached than ever before.

Prospects are also less willing to engage; it’s a nightmare, they can find a lot of what they need on the Internet.

Is this your experience too? Are you struggling more now to fill your sales funnel? Are you wondering where your next customers are coming from? Is this completely stressing you out?

Stress no longer!

There’s a well known rule in sales (and in business) called Pareto’s law. It’s also known as the 80/20 rule.

It works like this:

• You will get 80% of your sales revenue from 20% of your customers
• 20% of your sales team will bring in 80% of your sales revenue
• 80% of your sales team will bring in the remaining 20% of the sales revenue

This rule applies throughout business too:

• 80% of productivity will come from 20% of the employees
• 80% of problems will come from 20% of customers
• And so on…

Pareto’s law can be applied to prospecting as well. If you’re new to sales and need to develop your pipeline, then you should be spending 80% of your time prospecting. Once you have a full sales funnel (and if you’ve done this consistently for 3-6 months, you should). After that you need to be spending 20% of your time prospecting.

Here’s where the problem lies of course, most new sales people or business owners don’t spend that 80% of time up front building their sales funnel. And then they don’t spend that 20% of time consistently ensuring their funnel stays full.

That is why so many sales professionals, entrepreneurs and business owners struggle. That’s why so many experience that ‘boom and bust’ cycle. They have no business in the pipeline they panic and frantically start prospecting. They get a few new customers, feel safe again and stop. Then those projects are done and there’s nothing in the pipeline…so guess what? Yep, they panic and start frantically prospecting again.

The key to never, ever having to experience ‘boom and bust’ is to prospect consistently, every day, no matter what, you need to make time or outsource it.

A sales funnel can be developed in many ways, e.g.:

• Cold calling
• Networking
• Referral selling
• Social media

The important point is that no matter what else is going on with you or in your business you take the time to look for new business every single day.

If you need more help building your pipeline, then contact me today.

It can be impossible to tell one company from another when they sell virtually identical products or services and that can be a real challenge when convincing your prospects to buy your offerings over the competitions.

So you’ll need to show them how you are different, which isn’t always easy, but when you do it will often change the whole dynamics of your business and galvanise the management and staff like nothing else could.

Don’t merely look at what you do and how you do it now – because if you can’t find one, you’ll need to create one and that will mean looking at what you could offer that’s different to the competition.

Get really creative with it and brainstorm it with your team. Get a professional in to help with this, someone who’ll be objective and who will push and prod and drag any and every angle out of you and your resources.

Look very closely at all the features of all your products and/or services, how and why you do what you do and could it be done better, cheaper, faster. Maybe there’s a common feature in some of your competitors products that would lend itself to being fashioned into the driving force of your USP.

Remember! Your customers are only interested in what’s in it for them. So your USP must offer them a benefit to achieve the greatest impact. You mustn’t get your features mixed up with your benefits either; a simple example might be: ‘we’re open 24-hours’ [feature] ‘allows you to shop when it’s convenient to you’ [benefit].

It may not be easy but once you’ve created your USP you will see a remarkable boost in your sales and if it’s strong enough, which it should be, it will become the whole ethos of your business.

Start revolutionising your business today, hire me to help you brainstorm and develop your company’s USP.