Andy Black
Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
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I never liked the marathon analogy. I was a sprinter... I like moving fast, and then recovering.Hey JP here,
Been some time since I posted on here. I know its said over and over again. Working to sell is like running a marathon. I’ve heard over and over again the saying of “business is a marathon” I respectfully disagree, I think it’s harder.
For anyone who has run a marathon. The hardest part isn’t the marathon itself, the marathon is the end and you know it’s going to finish soon and you’ll be able to go home and recover and move on with your life. I would say its much more similar to training for the marathon itself, but the training never ends.
I’ll be honest with you, I’ve been struggling with cold calls. Rejection is not easy especially when you have a 3rd party in the middle of the conversation when you’re trying to sell. I’ve tried several different routes from emailing, to texting but the best return of my time is cold calling companies that have poor websites or even NO websites at all. Back to the analogy of training for a marathon.. Preparing for a cold call reminds me of the moments before I go out for a run. I dread it and I have a small routine before I do it, but once I’m into it I have to push through till I’m done. Then I’ll have to do it again the next day and the next until I find someone suitable to sell for me.
What helped me improve in the past 2 months is the practice of prospecting and preparing before I reach out to people. I look for businesses all over ranging from Facebook to google maps to try and find businesses. Then I rank them from 1-5 from how likely do I think they’ll be interested, this depends on a number of factors from personal experience. Then I set a power hour either at 8am or 9am and I call for an hour straight.
The time block helps immensely. I usually do maybe 10-20 calls a day now because of it. In the past I would tell myself 2-3 then that’s it and back to working on the computer. The truth is, I’ve gotten at least 5x more prospective warm leads just by introducing myself and offering to email them more information.
Two books that I just read that are helping my sales move forward are
Fanatical Prospecting ( about keeping your pipeline full)
And
SPIN Selling (great mind set about sales and how to approach them - thanks to @Fox for this one! Still reading this atm)
Got around to updating my website for the business as well, Arra Development featuring my portfolio with companies and people I trust.
Also, My Wife is getting into her own FL idea and I'm helping her with the product development and marketing plan.
This phrase made perfect sense for me:
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