Pioneering Prospecting Strategies to Skyrocket Your Sales | SOS Ep. 343

Ever wondered how to transform your prospecting game in the world of sales? 
Strap in as we unmask the secrets to effective prospecting. From decoding the basics to building momentum, we're going to take you through the entire prospecting funnel, providing a detailed guide on how to identify your product market fit, create an ideal customer profile, and harvest the low-hanging fruit. Plus, we have a tried and tested system of 125 targets split into five buckets to maximize your efficiency and keep you on track!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Sales Builder Academy business of sales live webinar. That means it is Thursday and it is noon on the East Coast, so today's topic is gonna be about prospecting 101. And it is something that I get a lot of questions about how to prospect and what's the process and that's one of the reasons why this topic is coming up today, and the topic of prospecting is one of the most important when you think about the sales cycle. If you don't have enough people to talk to, how are you ever going to get business? So, gonna run through kind of what I call the prospect funnel and also show you a way that you can prospect extremely easily using technology the sales technology rhythm AI that I co-founded with two other partners. So let's get started. Let's get started. So, prospecting, you are going to have to create momentum and you're gonna have to build extremely fast when you get out into the field and you're going to lose business that you inherit if you're starting to taking over a territory that you've never had before or somebody else has worked it or you are going to have to build it from scratch. Either way, it is going to be the exact same principles as before, okay, so, with that said, there's a process that goes through that. So this is what is called the prospecting funnel. By the way, if you are hopping on, shoot me a message and let me know where you are tuning in from.

Speaker 1: 1:54

Right now, we don't have anybody on. We had a lot of people sign up, don't have anybody on. I hope that I did everything correctly. I've had some snafus recently. I'm not gonna lie. I've had some snafus. When it's come to the live streams, there's a lot of different buttons to push and things behind the scene, cause right now, I'm live on StreamYard, I'm live on LinkedIn and I'm live on YouTube. So hopefully, in the invitation, I have the right link or people are not gonna be able to be there. All right, cool, tie's on board. I appreciate that tie. Thank you very much. We got somebody in New Orleans. Okay, I guess it's just not showing on my screen, but people are there, cool, all right. So thank you all for responding and again, if you're just joining, let us know where you are calling from. But right now, this is the prospecting funnel, all right.

Speaker 1: 2:44

So the prospecting funnel is really important, that there's multiple funnels in your sales process. Prospecting is the lifeblood of any business. You're gonna lose business through attrition or satisfied customers that don't need your product or service anymore cause they're still using whatever you have. You know, for instance, I know Tie is on the call right now. Tie is in the device world, so if he sells a device, it's gonna be some time before they're going to need another device, so he's gonna have to prospect like crazy. So the first thing you have to do is, obviously it doesn't matter where you're starting you have to identify first your product market fit, and this is what I call the beginning of the process phase. Okay, this is where you're going to focus on building your process for specific market and create your ideal customer profile or your ICP. Yes, you can sell your product or service to anyone in the world, but let's be honest, there are some people more suited than others. So you're gonna identify your product market fit, you're gonna create your ICP and then you're gonna move on to what I call the detective phase. The detective phase, you're gonna build who. You're gonna focus your time and create ways to get them to tell you what they need and when they need it.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Okay, I've made the analogy before. I can walk out my front door and I can scream as loudly as possible that I do Sales coaching. I've got a sales technology platform, I'm about to open a brick and mortar store. But how many of those people let's say I talked to 200 people. By the way, I'm in the second largest neighborhood in the city of Charlotte. There's 800 plus homes in my neighborhood alone how many of those people are actually going to buy my product or service or need a product or service that I can create? Very few, so I'm just wasting a lot of time. Now I have activity, but is it really productive? So, identifying your product market fit, no matter what it is. For instance, let's take my sales coaching business. I'm not going to go pitch it to accounts Now. Technically they can buy it, they have money, but it's kind of an exaggerated example. But I think you know what I mean Once you identified and you create your ideal customer profile, which your ideal customer profile is going to be a subset of your bigger group.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So, for instance, I used to sell radiation machines to dermatologists. Not every dermatologist was my ideal customer because there's something called a Moh's procedure. That is a dermatologist that does skin cancer removal. So my machine cleared skin cancer using radiation. I did not want to go into those offices where they had a Moh's surgeon in the beginning. That was not my low hanging fruit. That was not my ideal customer at the time when I got started. So I focused on dermatology offices where they did not have a Moh's surgeon and those were the overall bucket. Then how I targeted them later was are they sending their patients away? That is where I needed to live in those offices and that is what I did. For the first four to five months I lived in the offices that had the need. Then I built my dream 125.

Speaker 1: 6:10

The 125 is 125 targets. You don't have enough time to go over 125. And I hear this a lot and I used to be guilty of this. I just need more. I need more. I need more in my database. I need more. No, you don't. You need 125. They're gonna change your business forever and those are split up into five buckets. I call them the 10s, the 9s, the 8s, the 7s and the 6s. Your 10s and 9s. 80% of your business is gonna come from that 50 pack of targets. That's where your business is going to come from, 80% of it. And then the 20, the 7s, the I mean sorry the 8s, the 7s and the 6s. That's where 20% of your business is gonna come from. But you still have to work them. You can't just focus on like 25 and expect to be very successful, because once you've run through them you have nothing built in the pipeline.

Speaker 1: 7:05

The detective phase all right, that's the second main phase. The detective phase 10 opening questions. Okay, and these 10 opening questions are things such as what have you done in the past in product or category, x, y, z? So, for instance, I'm gonna go back to the analogy of the radiation machines that I used to sell. I would walk in, I would not talk product, I would not talk features and benefits. I would ask questions and let them tell me what their experience is, because then I know how to best suit and tailor my sales approach with them.

Speaker 1: 7:39

But until I've done that, until I know who I'm talking to, I'm just using a shotgun. It's the shotgun method just shoot everything and just hope you hit something. So I'd walk in and say what are you currently doing to treat your patients with skin cancer? I didn't say are you treating patients with skin cancer? That's a dermatology clinic. They're probably gonna look at me crazy. Of course they're treating skin cancer patients. I'm saying, I'm asking them what are you doing? That was one of my 10 questions.

Speaker 1: 8:06

Now the 10 questions need to be whatever you want to get the information from them. So I don't say, hey, this is the 10 questions you need to have, but think of 10 questions open-ended. That gets the other person talking. This is very important and this is a step that I see a lot of people in their sales process. When they're prospecting, they skip over, they don't ask enough questions, go 10 questions deep. It's called the detective phase for a reason. You want to know everything there is to know about them and they're gonna tell you exactly how they like to be sold, what their process is.

Speaker 1: 8:45

Some people just make decisions very quickly and they don't look back. Some people agonize over decisions for nine months and they weigh the pros and cons. You need to know in the beginning is this somebody that's gonna take nine months or is this an innovator? Is this somebody that's gonna jump on it really quick? And they like what they hear and they want to start immediately. Those are the people that are going to elevate your business quickly. You don't want to waste your time trying to pull through, like in Q4 of this year. If you're up with one of those nine to 12 month decision makers and you're trying to pull them through in Q4, you need to spend time elsewhere because they're not going to pull through in Q4. So you're 10 opening questions.

Speaker 1: 9:26

Then what would happen is you start the role playing in your head. The first question I love to ask is what are you currently doing to treat skin cancer patients? They would say a myriad of things, like we are sending them away. Whenever I heard that, the light bulbs would go off, the sirens would alarm. I just hit the jackpot because my machine now allows that clinic to treat their skin cancer patients. That will completely change how I approach. But what I've heard and what I've experienced and just talking to a lot of sales professionals, they walk in with so many assumptions and they don't walk in with a curious mind. I will tell you this if you can be curious while prospecting, you're going to be wildly successful. Pretend as if you have no idea and just be like a five-year-old that asks a lot of questions. You're going to get a lot further in that clinic. They're also going to see how badly or bad I don't remember how to say that if it's at the LI, but they'll see how bad you really want to get to know them. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Speaker 1: 10:40

The 10 opening questions is really important. You've gotten through the detective phase. Then you're going to move on to the execution phase. There's two steps to the execution phase. While you're prospecting, you've already figured out how they want to be sold. You already figured out their timeline to buy. You've established the need. You understand everything about their business. Then, when you're in the sales call or you're touching them, you're shooting the personalized video.

Speaker 1: 11:06

After the fact you're sending an email, one of the touchpoints in the buyer's journey, whatever that is, you want to have one big thing. What is your one big thing, your one big takeaway? That you want to have that stamp, that you want to leave that impression with your prospect. It has to be one thing and one thing only. You can't have multiple topics or multiple things that you want to leave for them, because it's going to confuse them. Because next comes the CTA, the call to action.

Speaker 1: 11:37

The execution phase is you've picked your targets, you've created your questions. Now it's time to execute. Each call will have the one big thing you want them to focus on a call to action. The call to action could be let's have a buying meeting, let's get you on the phone with Dr Jones, who's already using the product. That's also another great question is who do you rely on?

Speaker 1: 12:01

I use this a lot in the sales world. Who do you rely on or who do you reach out to as a mentor or a colleague that you like to bounce off big decisions like this? They would tell me I have a couple of dermatology friends that I like to talk to. If I knew them again, the lights would go off, the bells would go and I'd say well, that's fantastic. Would you like me to set because I know Dr Jones are really well would you like me to set up a conversation where they can share the experience, especially if it is a current customer?

Speaker 1: 12:35

In a nutshell, the prospecting funnel is a process that you can replicate, repeat over and over again at every single one of your prospects, your accounts. You can just rinse and repeat this Basically from the beginning, if you are swimming in the right pond, if you are calling on the right people. Again, I could sell radiation machines to a lot of different types of doctors, but it worked on non-melanoma skin cancer. That is a very specific subset. I'm sure that other doctors see skin cancer, but what they do? They send them to the specialist. They send them to a dermatologist. Yes, general practitioners could probably use this, but again, it's very specific. Your product will have an Uber specific. What you want to do is you focus on the specific the riches are in the niches and then after a while, once you're in the territory or once you've started to build up a massive base, that is when you start to expand your funnel. You expand your universe. In the beginning, the funnel goes down and gets narrow and narrow and narrow. That's why it's a funnel, because it gets more targeted, and then you pull through. Then afterwards you go back up and you create a much bigger world that you're trying to sell to.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Any questions for those of you who are watching right now, shoot your questions in the comments. This is a first for me. I've never done a live webinar. There is about a 30-second delay from what I'm talking to when it's posting on the sites, the questions will start rolling in. I will move on to general mindset. As far as prospecting, I love to prospect. I love to talk to new people. I love to engage people in the market who have either never heard of the product. They've heard of the product but it just didn't connect the right way. I absolutely love to do that.

Speaker 1: 14:44

There's a fantastic book if you want to get really in the weeds with prospecting, called Fanatical Prospecting. I do believe Jeb Blunt is the author. I've read the book, I've listened to the audiobook. It is fantastic. I can't stress enough how important prospecting is while you are out there in the field. It is crucial and it is critical, not to mention the fact you're always going to have a market that's ever changing. If you're in the medical field, you're going to have doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants. You're going to have providers constantly moving in and out of your territory. You need to be able to roll with the punches and you need to be able to really dive deep and really dig in.

Speaker 1: 15:39

No questions right now. If you're listening and you haven't, let me know where you're calling from, where you are streaming this, where you're viewing this right now. Let me know where you are from. Hey, justin, what's up man? Let me know where you are and I'll just keep rocking and rolling. If you have any questions during, just shoot them out there and let me know.

Speaker 1: 16:04

What I'm going to do now is I'm going to show you the Rhythm AI platform that allows you to do prospecting and allows you to do prospecting at a tremendously fast rate as well. Here is the dashboard and I'm looking to find where it actually there it is. This is the Rhythm AI dashboard. If you go to the clients page, by the way, if you go to rhythmaicom R-I-T-H-M-A-Icom, you can try the product for 14 days and kick the tires. It's a really great product. It helps you with your targeting, your routing, your prospecting, and it's really easy, really simple. If you see this screen right here, there's a couple things. You can pick prospects nearby. You can add clients. You can import from a spreadsheet If you've got an Excel spreadsheet with current providers on there, you can or current targets, you can, or you can have us help you with that as well. Let's just go to the map and I'll show you how easy this is. If you go over here, rhythm is connected with Google. We have tapped into Google Right here.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I'm just going to put in, let's say, dermatologists, and then I hit enter. You see all of the offices that pop up. So this is great if you are brand new to a territory, if you are trying to refresh, reboot, or you know that there's new targets in your area. You just don't know how to get them. They're just permanently자ques Vasa Flan iterations. You can add dermatology that added one more. Dermatology surgery that added a bunch. Wow, okay, I'm going to put in skin clinic. Okay, that was a lot more. Let's say I was in the med spa world. Let's just do med spa. Wow, okay, look at that. Then let's do cosmetic surgery. You can see how many of these boxes have popped up. If I click on a box, you can see Renew Med Spa.

Speaker 1: 18:41

Just by dragging over Oakview Dermatology, rock Hill, south Carolina, fort Mill Dermatology and Fort Mill, you can easily go through all of these different areas right here. Dermatology skin center you click on one. I got to go out here real quick. Hold on. If you click out, if it's enlarged, this doesn't pop up. This is the scraping of Google.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Right now, you've got everything you need to know Dermatology skin center of Albemarle and all you got to do is add to prospect. If you're prospecting, I highly recommend that you use something like Rhythm. Why? Because watch this. You just start adding Dermatology Care, charlotte. Boom, you start adding all of these different. All of a sudden. Now you're creating all of these different lists. Then what you can do is you can filter these later. I'm actually going to see if I go here. Yep, I can do that. All right, cool, just start out of prospect.

Speaker 1: 19:48

Once you add the prospect, you'll see that these become little pin marks. What they're scraping from online is their website, their office hours. These office hours are not the best times to go see the providers or get into the clinics, but at least you know when they're open, because some of these places are satellite offices. They're not open every single day If they want to send information to their patients. All right, let's just go out here to Dermatology of the West End. You can see here. Look at this.

Speaker 1: 20:24

All of a sudden, I'm just now. Look at this database that I'm creating. Look at this. Now I've gotten 17 in. What a minute. Rockhill Dermatology Center. Let's go up here to Concord. There you go. Boom, let's try another one here. That's the Dermatology of the Carolinas. I should have put on a clock, but I didn't think about that. All right, you can see what I'm doing here. All of a sudden, now this starts to build out your list If you really don't know what you're doing. This is a fantastic way.

Speaker 1: 21:02

Let's go into an account. Let's take Steel Creek Dermatology we got all their information. They're unaware right now that we know of. You've got the five phases of sales unaware, aware, trial, user, advocate Right now. I mentioned before the rankings 10 through 6. Right now they're 5 because they haven't been ranked yet as a target. They're a prospect. Here's their address. Here's their phone number. Here's their website. Between their website and this information here, you're going to know as much as you can before you get started as possible. Let's just go to their website real quick. This is going to take me to another screen. Hopefully, yes, it does. This is prospecting and being a detective.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Let's go back to, let's say, I was either doing post-procedure kits or I was still doing the radiation. Let's go and see what their services are. First. Let's go to. Let's just see what they have. They've got skin pin Right off the bat. When you get onto their webpage, whatever your prospects webpage is showing, that is what they really care about. That's what they care about. Boom, right off the bat. They want to let you know they've got a skin pin and it's now available. They really believe the skin pin is important. You can get a consultation. There's a little about section Dr Helton she's a great lady Cosmetic dermatology, exceptional care, medical dermatology. There's a newsletter and then there's some information. I would read all of these things because again they're putting in posts like let's just click on this August, specials for 2023. Cosmetic removals, so sebaceous hyperplasia, melia they're just showing what is important to them.

Speaker 1: 22:59

You go back to the homepage. There's multiple pages. So now you got reviews, providers, esthetician staff in the community. So if you notice they're really, oh, I didn't see those, okay, so it's a banner. So they've got skin pin. And then they've got the VIP excuse me, peel. And then we've also got, oh, charlotte Magazine Top Doctors. So there's a July issue of Charlotte Magazine Top Doctors award recipient. That's excellent. And then we've moved. Come see us, okay. So they have a new address. So let's go back and see if the address this is another reason why you want to trust but verify Google, okay, because they might not have updated it on the Google page. So let's go back. Does it show 11040? Yes, okay, now they've moved, but it has been updated. So that's a thumbs up.

Speaker 1: 23:58

You don't want to go to the wrong place. It's just wasted effort. So, before you go out in the field, you want to do this. Now, when do you want to do this? You want to do this on nights and weekends? Okay, do not sit behind your computer during the day and do this. You can do this on the go. The first thing you want to do is get that first couple days planned out that you're going to prospect and who you're going to go after, and then you're going to fill in your gaps with figuring out who else you're going to prospect. All right, so they've got us services. Okay, let's go to the services. Oh, I guess I have to click down. Okay, medical dermatology All right.

Speaker 1: 24:34

Skin cancer diagnosis and surgical removal Okay, so let's see what they do. All right, skin cancer diagnosis, early stage Okay, how can I done? How is skin cancer treated? Excision bone surgery During your consultation, your health will be evaluated on the team, which is the best route for you. Contact us today to schedule an appointment. Okay, so they mentioned Moe's surgery on there. But you have to have a curatage. Okay, I'll just perform on this tape. Okay, so let's see. Let's see Dr Helton. It doesn't mention anything about Moe's, but it does talk about surgery. So you're going to want to. This is, I mean, still treat Pupil.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Dermatology is a prospect. Okay, they're a prospect because they don't have a Moe's surgeon. Now, whether or not they would be interested is a completely different story, but you kind of understand where we're going with this. So I'm going to take one more just to give you an example. So what I would do after that, I would call the office and try to get it again, try to get more information before I get out the door.

Speaker 1: 25:50

Alright, so let's go to Oakview Dermatology. Now. Oakview Dermatology is a new dermatology clinic since I left the field, so I know nothing about them. So I really want to dive deep into what they're doing. Okay, oakview Dermatology in Rock Hill, south Carolina. Okay, this is about us. Alright, it's something about Ohio, so it looks like there are multiple clinics. Okay, so this is. Oakville Dermatology is providing exceptional care. It's in Ohio and South Carolina. So there's a Fort Mill location, a Rock Hill location, and then there's one, two, three, four, so there's a bunch in Ohio.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Oh, chilicothe. I played ball in there for a summer. There's not much in Chilicothe, but there is a Oakview Dermatology. So when you're walking in already. This is telling me information. It's telling me that the person at the clinic may not be the decision maker. Now I'm not going to strike them off the list but again, if I'm trying to close the budding Q4, this is kind of a warning flag. So this office would not be a 10 or a 9 right off the bat. So, but again, I don't want to judge.

Speaker 1: 27:01

Let's go take a look at their services. Okay, now they have a Moes. Okay, they have a Moes. So let's dive deeper Medical Dermatology. So they've got medical dermatology and they have some kind of platitudes, nothing really deep. Let's go look at the Moes. Okay, so then what should I expect? Moes, all right, so they have Moes. Let's look at here's the Rock Hill, okay, okay, so here are the providers. So there is Dr Saksdeder and then there's Michael Terrabile. He's a PA and she is a DO. So I don't think that Dr Saksdeder is a Moe surgeon. So it doesn't appear that they have one in Rock Hill. But let's go to Fort Mill because that's the other location. All right, let's look at the providers. Okay, dr Megan Joint oh, there's the Moes. Okay, so Dr Wainer I hope I'm saying that name right he's a Moe surgeon. So what probably happens is that the Rock Hill location, they're going to send all their patients to the Fort Mill location so they have a protocol for skin cancer removal.

Speaker 1: 28:12

It doesn't mean that they would not be interested in a device, they're just not the low-hanging fruit that you're looking for. So, all right, so let me answer some questions. So Justin asked so what would an example 306090 plan consist of for a new potential client? Okay, well, the 306090 as far as a potential client is. It's kind of a loaded question. I'll try to unpack it as best I can in such a short period of time. So you were going to want to get, while you're asking questions, you're going to want to get signals that they have a need and they have an opening.

Speaker 1: 28:56

Now, sometimes, if you're new to sales or you're new to medical sales, you might not pick up on those buying signals or those buying statements. So you just need to ask more questions because and one of your questions can be, and one of the questions I used to ask when you find something that you really like, what kind of timeframe do you try to make a decision? Do you debate it for a while? Or if you know exactly what you want to go for. Do you implement it quickly? You can ask one of those questions and then you'll find out exactly how long it takes them to make decisions.

Speaker 1: 29:37

So, for 306090, again as I mentioned before with the Oakview dermatology, for both locations, their 306090 would be if you have time during the day and you have some extra time where you want to give them a call or you want to try to set something up, you can do that. But basically, for a 306090 day plan, you want to hit your 10s and 9s. You're most important people where you think you're going to get the most business. You want to have at least three touch points. Now, if you were on the call last week, the whole world has changed. Touch points now can be personalized video If you were on the webinar with Matthew Ray Scott. If not, you can go back on my LinkedIn page and you can rewatch that, because it's completely changed. I mean, 10 years ago, the only way to get meetings and the only way to get in front of buyers was face-to-face. Covid changed everything Digital personalized video, using Zoom, using FaceTime. There are other ways to get in there.

Speaker 1: 30:43

So, realistically, your immediate customers. You want to close them in 90 days. Okay, now, that's difficult sometimes, but the way you can do that is you can truncate. It can happen. When I started selling radiation machines, I closed two units in six weeks and the reason why was because I hyper-focused on a clinic. I had 12 touch points in two months with the doctor. But the way it's all about the way you reach out to them. I didn't use the word circle back, follow up, checking in. You know, did you get my last email? Did you get my last? I didn't do any of that. Every time I came in, I came in with a new question. I came in with a new thought of how we can move the ball down the field and get it into the end zone and get the deal done.

Speaker 1: 31:33

So a 30, 60, 90 day plan is going to look different for every single person you're going to have, and I do think that the 30, 60, 90 is kind of outdated a little bit. Now. I know that's probably not the best answer, but you know a lot of people. What's the famous line from Mike Tyson? Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That's kind of what happens in the field. You've got a great laid plan. It's more, not about the activity, and that's what I think the 30, 60, 90 does is it creates activity as opposed to a process.

Speaker 1: 32:11

So in 90 days you want to have 12 touch points that can be spread out. That can be, you know, hyper focused. You can do a drip campaign where you start off slow and then you start to add more once you get engagement. There's a lot of different things you can do. In fact, I'm going to probably have a 30, I'm going to write it down now 30, 60, 90 day seminar Because I really need to. I really need to rethink using personalized video. I mean, matthew really really jogged some things loose last week when he was talking about personalized video and some things even clicked for me. So hope that answered your question.

Speaker 1: 32:53

Justin Ty, do you have this set up to plug into Salesforce or CRM directly? Right now we do not. So right now our platform rhythm is a standalone platform. We don't have any APIs for any external CRMs right now. So that is something that we're working on as a company moving forward, but right now we don't. So I'm just going to tie a bow on this rhythm and then see if anybody else has any other questions and, again, if anybody else is watching. If anybody else is watching and wants to chime in with a question, you can let me know where you are watching from and also what questions you have.

Speaker 1: 33:34

So you go back to the map and then. So one thing that's also good if you have multiple locations, okay. So Piedmont Plastic Surgery and Dermatology has a ridiculous amount of offices. I think there's like nine offices in the city of Charlotte, in surrounding areas. You know the Charlotte Metro Market. So that can lead to some issues. Okay, that can lead to some issues because, thankfully, there's dedicated staff at each clinic. You don't have people bouncing around. But that's happened before.

Speaker 1: 34:06

So one of the things that Rhythm also helps with is you can customize the days. Let me just show you this real quick. So you go into the edit. So right now you're seeing that these are the hours Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday. You can go in and edit these to when it is specific to your buyers. So let's say that they only see sales professionals Mondays from 11 to 1pm, save. So that's great information for you to know when you're creating your routes, when you're creating your plans. You know that's the only time that they're going to see in Shelby North or, I'm sorry, forest City, north Carolina. That's the only time that they're going to see sales professionals, or that's the only time you can book meetings. Why? Maybe they only have providers that are there two or three days a week so they want to focus their attention on their employees. So you can customize everything for every account because, again, every single prospect is going to be completely different. There is no one size fits all for your prospecting. Okay, the only thing you can do is a process and allow the buyer to tell you and explain to you what your journey or what their journey is going to be. Okay, and as a reminder, you can go to rhythmaicom and rhythm for 14 days for free, and rhythmaicom. So I'm going to wrap up in a few minutes. I'm going to wait and see if anybody has any further questions. Prospecting is so important and philosophies are always evolving.

Speaker 1: 35:56

I used to be a storm the gates type of prospector Six-four, 260 pounds. When I walk into a room people notice I'm just a large guy. I'm a tall guy, a large guy, a big guy. Everybody thinks I play for the Carolina Panthers. I very rarely would get told no in person and I could ask questions and I could sidestep things and I usually could get back. I could get a meeting. Access was not an issue for me. If I did that over the phone, that was a different story. Somebody can easily hang up on you over the phone. In person, it's not as easy for them. So my philosophy was storm the gates.

Speaker 1: 36:36

So when I used to start every position, I would drive to every single account that was in my dream 125. And it would usually take me probably about two and a half to three weeks Two and a half to three weeks to hit every single office. And some of these offices I mean I had North and South Carolina. Some of these offices are five, four, five hours away, especially going to Savannah Georgia, but I would hit every single one of them. I'd create my lists and very similar to what rhythm has turned into, but I'd create my lists and I would just go one after the other and within two and a half weeks to three weeks, I could hit every single account. That was in my dream 2025. And then I could reshuffle the deck and figure out who were my targets, who were my priorities, and then I would start to focus on them and create a plan that is not as efficient.

Speaker 1: 37:29

So, while you're going through this right now and you're going through this prospecting journey, just realize that it's fluid. I mean, I've completely changed how I recommend to people to get out in the field and to prospect. So and it's because technology has taken over and COVID changed everything I'm going to shoot right now. If you're watching this, you're either watching it live on LinkedIn or YouTube, you're watching the replay from my LinkedIn page or you're going to be listening to my voice. Go through this on my surviving outside sales podcast. Think about that for a moment, because your buyers have the same type of ability to hear your content, to hear your voice, so you can create touch points a lot faster. So, no, I do not recommend that you do what I do. It just drive everywhere and storm the gates. That's not efficient anymore. It doesn't work anymore.

Speaker 1: 38:27

If I were to go back out in the field today, I'll tell you exactly what I would do. Obviously, I would use rhythm. I create my list, I start making phone calls and try to gather as much information. I start asking questions over the phone that I would ask in front, but different. So, like to a front desk person. Hey, I'm brand new, can you help me out? Yeah, what do you need? Well, thank you so much for helping me. If you were in my shoes, how would you go about meeting with such and such Dr Jones, dr Smith, how would you go about getting in front of them? Does your office already have a process in place? Can you explain that to me? Can you teach me and let the other person talk?

Speaker 1: 39:12

Offices usually have some type of process. You know the person at the front desk office manager. They're not just winging it. They've been told by the physicians or they've been told by the business owners. Doesn't matter if you're in medical sales or not. They have been told by many people or they've been told by the bosses this is what we're going to do. So that's exactly what they do and they'll tell you hey, this is what we do. You can't do this, can't do that.

Speaker 1: 39:38

If you go to, if you call before storming the gates, if you call and you hear well, we don't allow reps, you don't allow reps. You can turn it around and Chris Fawesome repeat the question in a very curious tone you don't allow reps, let them talk, and they're gonna say no, but you can do XYZ. Oh, okay, great. Is there a way to? Can I email some information? How can I get information to the providers if I want to get it to them faster or I want to communicate with them? Sometimes they're gonna give them, give you generic emails like info at or questions at, and just ask them. Is it possible? Because a lot of times their business cards will have email addresses on there. So can you snap a picture of the business card and send it to me? What's the harm to ask that? You'd be surprised that people will send you information if you just ask them. You'll never know unless you ask.

Speaker 1: 40:39

You can also say something like you know what? I really hate to do this to you. I really don't wanna bother you, but would you do me this huge favor. I know it's really out of left field, but can you snap a photo of Dr Stone's business card and send it to me? Sometimes the email address is on there. Then, if you get an email address or a phone number oh my gosh, we got a phone number. You wanna make sure it's not the general number or it's a cell phone number then you can send a personalized video, like Matthew Ray Scott says, and you can do informative. You can do a virtual demo, an educational mini series. You know product evolution, innovation, basically why you should meet face to face, why you should talk, why you should interact with me.

Speaker 1: 41:29

Prospecting is about finding the right people and building them up into buyers, making them into customers, and you're going to have to continue to cycle in new people every single month, every single quarter, every single year for the rest of your career. Welcome to sales. I'm gonna hang out for about a minute, see if there's any other questions. If you want to reach out to me, you can Reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can also go to MikeOKellycom for sales resources and courses, anything outside sales related, anything about building sales processes, sales training, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 42:14

The sales podcast is on my website surviving outside sales. I run five episodes a week. Usually one is a big topic featured episode, which is usually the webinars from the week and a half before, usually post on Mondays and then so this Monday will be the webinar from Matthew Ray Scott will be posted and there's products. You can see the products in the back here if you're watching tumblers, mugs, coffee mugs. You can also buy coffee from my website as well. Coffee is for closers. I absolutely love coffee. You can go to MikeOKellycom check it out.

Speaker 1: 42:51

Reach out to me if you have any questions.

Speaker 1: 42:53

Please reach out to me on LinkedIn and let me know if you have any questions, if there's anything that I can help you with in the outside sales world, especially in the medical sales world. I've been there. You don't wanna have to make the same mistakes that I have made in the past, and the evolution of this industry is absolutely wild, absolutely wild, and I personally believe now that the old philosophy of shove them out, give them a year to figure it out and if they don't figure it out, we'll cut bait and lose them. I don't like that and I also don't like that. A lot of sales professionals are spinning their wheels in the field and they feel lost. That really sucks. That really sucks if they feel lost. So I'm just trying to help people, trying to be their navigator so that people have more confidence, can scale their business, make more money and live the life they want through sales.

Speaker 1: 43:47

All right, thank you so much. I really do appreciate everybody who was on today and asking questions. Thank you so much, I appreciate it and we'll see you next Thursday on the business of live webinars presented by Sales Builder Academy. Hope everybody has a fantastic rest of their day. See you later. Bye-bye.