Persistence in sales is an invaluable skill, particularly as it relates to sales lead generation. It is rare that a prospect responds to your first efforts to attract attention. Instead, you must develop and present an effective message sequence to keep your business and brand front and center.
The following is a more in-depth exploration of why persistence in sales pays off.
1. It Fortifies Your Strategic Plan
Persistence is sales is important even before you set your prospecting plan in motion. It takes time, effort, energy, and collaboration to map out your prospecting plan. A lack of planning leads to inefficiencies, waste, frustration, low morale, and a low return on investment.
Your plan should include a clear picture of the prospects you want to target, channels for communication, and messages. Build a message sequence that establishes the flow of communication throughout the prospect’s journey.
2. It Helps You Overcome Rejection
One definition of persistence is “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.” Sales is constantly filled with difficulty, opposition, and rejection.
Salespeople that succeed have to mentally overcome the difficulties of losing prospects or failing to attract them. You might invest a lot of time and resources into a communication strategy, for instance, only to experience little response. Getting hung up on, yelled at or otherwise rejected by prospects is also common in some forms of communication with prospects.
Avoid taking disinterest or a direct “no” personally, and instead use it as an opportunity to fine-tune your prospecting activities to efficiently target the right prospects with the best strategies. Sales is often referred to as the “art of persuasion,” because the primary role of reps is to convince targeted prospects to buy into a recommended solution to a problem. Persuasion implies that you have obstacles to overcome to get a person initially resistant to selling messages to come around to see the benefits you communicate.
3. You Maintain Pipeline Discipline
Sales prospecting is a process that continuously needs review and revision. A lack of discipline causes reps to react spontaneously to the ups and downs of each prospecting activity. This reactive approach makes it difficult to convert prospects into customers, but it also presents challenges in your ability to accurately assess what works and what doesn’t work.
The technology and tools that work with some prospects don’t work with others. Additionally, communication channels and markets evolve, which means approaches that worked before may not work in the future. Effective sales prospecting includes continuous execution of planned sales prospecting steps, along with evaluation and adjustment of strategies as necessary.
Conclusion
It is clear from the examples and information provided that persistence in sales gives you a much greater chance to succeed in sales prospecting in the long run.
For more insights on sales prospecting, along with tools that help you target ideal customers efficiently and effectively, contact us today!
