I realize in some fields the prospecting might be done for you. Maybe there is a team that sets appointments for you, even then to the COMPANY prospecting is the most important part of the sale....so much so that they have decided to invest heavily in prospecting in the form of lead generators etc. For those of us in tech sales however there are generally no leads or prospects given to us, we must be willing to find prospects ourselves...as unpleasing as that might be.
I am NOT a great prospector. I'm not. I realize that I am not though, and that makes me smarter than most sales people. I face call reluctance like you do, i face hesitation to go make in person visits with cold prospects. The one area that I am learning to be much better at than I was is networking. First of all...THE NUMBER ONE MISTAKE that people make when networking is not understanding the power of it all. I like many others out there go to a weekly meeting where we share leads and prospects for each other. One of the things that I hear the organizers say that really hits home for me is "its not called net-eating, or net-visiting, its called net-WORKING" I can not tell you how many times I am at events like this and all I see are huddled up masses up people talking about politics or basketball, or TV even. WRONG!! When you are at a networking event get someone to talk about their business. ESPECIALLY in the SMB market the business owners LOVE their businesses. Asking about their company is like asking about their son being the starting QB for the high school. They will beam with pride and tell you all about it.
Dont try to close a sale, and not try to do much more than your 30 second or 2 minute pitch about what you do. Let them talk. Let them tell you about their business. The more they talk, the more likely they are to tell you about where their pain spots are...even without you needing to be pushy about your services. One of our sales ladies was at an event not long ago. She had given up on the event because there was just not a lot happening, and she started to talk to an HVAC guy that only has 4 computers in his office in town. This is much smaller than our target audience...so she was just BSing with him and asking about his company. Before long she had learned that he had another location about 3 hours away with half a dozen employees and once a week he did teleconference meetings with them. What he divulged just in the course of talking was that he really feels like most of the meeting time the guys in the remote location were not paying attentions and at sometimes were totally away from the phones etc. Almost in passing he said I wish I could do some kind of video conferencing that was not too expensive and monitor that better. AHHH HAAAA. A hot button. Long story short this yielded an IP phone system sale, Video Conferencing, and a managed services contract for both locations.
She was not "working" the event in her mind...in my mind that was when she started to work it. When she cared less about trying to make a sale or tell everyone what she did, and she cared more about meeting people and getting them to talk.
Keep your focus at networking events and work them. Prospecting is something that you need to do some of every day.
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