Here’s an angle on sales and marketing that occurred to me this past week. Thinking back to my days in electronics school in the late nineties, I remember the black art of tuning an AM/FM radio so that the station that comes in matches the dial. (As I recall, I never did get that quite right).

Anyhow, I’ve always thought of prospecting as a screening-out process. I thought that you prospected by asking certain questions of “suspects” to find out if they were good leads or not. But, it didn’t occur to me that the prospecting process might affect the person’s viewpoint and their interest. That led to another train of thought.

Ever since I left the corporate world (where I got paid good money to waste time), I have come to realize that time is valuable. In the sales and marketing world, I think that a lot of struggling sales reps are struggling because they waste their time on the wrong people.

So, what does this have to do with a radio receiver? The antenna on a radio is being bombarded with every radio frequency in the air. But, the dial is only tuned to one station. How does it pick the right station, and play only what’s on that one? There’s a little gadget called an RF amplifier. Let’s say, for example, that you have your radio tuned to 90.7 FM. All of those signals are fed into the RF amplifier at the same time. It takes any signals that are close to 90.7 FM and boosts their strength. Any other signals are attenuated, or weakened.

So, I thought, what if the sales prospecting process worked this way too? What if your tagline, your 30-second commercial, or your web site stimulated the interest of a good prospect, while causing a bad prospect to LOSE interest?

You’d get more done in less time, I’ll wager.

I always hated it when my extraverted sales managers told me, “Don’t ever pre-judge anyone.” No, I’m not prejudiced against anyone, but I knew what was always coming next. “Just pick up the phone and call them!” Or, “You never know until you ask!” Something along those lines. Now, looking back on the last couple of months, I agree with the problem, but certainly not the solution.

I agree that pre-judging doesn’t make sense. One thing that I’ve learned in my life is that there’s no accounting for what’s going on in someone else’s head. Hell, sometimes I can’t make any sense of what’s going on in MY head. But that doesn’t mean you have to be obtuse and ignore the obvious. While it’s certainly true that some of the most unlikely prospects could one day become your best customers, certainly there are less painful ways of finding out than what traditional sales organizations will recommend to you.

Pre-judging is emotional, and it’s based on assumptions. Pre-judging screens out the wrong people. Pre-qualifying, on the other hand, is factual, and is based on direct measurable observations. When you qualify or disqualify a prospect, you can walk away feeling good about what you found either way.

Instead of trying to sell everyone, instead of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping for some of it to stick, and instead of calling all of your friends and relatives, hoping for their answering machines to pick up, reciting some God-awful sales script, and holding your breath, why not put some effort into coming up with a tactful question to ask? Better yet, how about a fun question to ask? How about coming up with a question that will pique the interest of a good prospect, and get a “sounds great; good luck with that” out of a bad one?

Here’s a little tip. Try going to a leads group to try out your qualifying question. Those places are full of people who don’t mind being sold to, and who probably won’t remember you if they see you again. A great place to try out the effectiveness of a sales question. More on this in later weeks.

This week has been a breakthrough week for me, thanks to the fact that I just started reading The One Minute Millionaire. I’ve known for awhile that I’ve needed a team to really get things going, but I didn’t get how easy it really was.

Back in September, I experimented with creating a 30-day game, designed to clarify my goals and help me to develop a more optimistic outlook on my situation. It did help, but only in a limited sort of way. It basically consisted of a group of individual players all playing alone. What this book illustrates is a way to create a game that is interactive, and where there’s really something at stake.

So, here’s why it’s easier to form a team than most of us think:
1. You don’t have to have everything figured out. In other words, you don’t have to have a 30-step plan and a detailed set of goals put together before you start asking people to join your team. Matter of fact, it’s better if you don’t. If you have a plan already put together, you’re basically saying “here’s what my team is all about; take it or leave it.” If, on the other hand, you have a general idea of what you want to do, and just find one or two partners to help you brainstorm a goal and a rough plan, you’ll have an easier time forming the rest of the team.

2. You don’t have to manage everything yourself. If you let other people have a say in the goals and plan of the team, you’ll find that people will be eager to help.

3. You don’t have to learn all the skills or know all the answers. You couldn’t possibly do that anyway. Instead of spending two years going to school to learn something you don’t know, find somebody who’s already gone to school for two years and give them a reason to get on your team.

4. You don’t have to hire a team. There again, it’s better if you don’t. If your team insists on payment up front, you most likely haven’t sparked their interest. You only have to pay people when it’s all about you and your agenda. If you make it worth their while to be on the team, they’ll be happy to make their money later. If you allow them the opportunity to get in on the ground floor, they’ll be willing to invest their time up front.

So, how to you get people on your team? This all comes back to the same thing I’ve been talking about all along: you need a clear message about who you are. Did you write your mission statement yet? If you’re thinking of forming a team, maybe it’s time you got around to that.

I used to make fun of mission statements. I used to say that they were vague, meaningless, and generally pointless. That’s because most of them are. You have to chuckle when you hear things like “Our company is committed to customer satisfaction through quality and excellence!” Whatever that means. But, it occurred to me that it doesn’t have to be that way.

For some time now, I’ve been debating over a number of action plans for different areas of my life and business, and noticing my own wishy-washiness. The problem, I realized, is that I haven’t been clear on exactly what it is I’m committed to.

By “committed,” I don’t mean being committed in a “I’m committed to doing 20 push-ups a day” sort of way. What I mean is being committed to achieving a particular result, without necessarily knowing exactly how it’s going to work. In other words, commitment isn’t an action plan. It’s a way of being.

Here’s another tidbit on this. If you aren’t excited about something, you aren’t committed to it. It’s as simple as that. If someone tells you otherwise, ask yourself how happy they look.

So, here goes:
The Introverted Entrepreneur is committed to empowering individuals to thrive on a labor of love that expresses their individual nature.