Time to apply the power of prospecting

By Bob Davis

I was having dinner with a group of some of the best sales people in the world. The occasion was an awards dinner for the best sales people who worked at Morgan Stanley. I was the guess speaker, but as is often the case, I learned more from my audience than they did from me.

I sat next to one of the best of the best. Pete earned more than two million dollars in commissions in 2009, which was a tough year for most sales people, and particularly tough for the financial services industry. I had to ask, “What is the secret of your success?”

The answer came back in one word—prospecting. Although Pete has a large book of business and could spend most of his time servicing it as most of his contemporaries do, he disciplines himself to spend only 50 percent of his time servicing his existing customers. When he does talk to his existing customers, he always asks for referrals.

Pete spends the rest of his time prospecting. He told me this takes a lot of discipline, because there is plenty he could do each day other than prospecting. He also knows that without prospecting he will be just another average performer in the sales world.

The thought occurs to me that the same principles apply to the advertising department in the newspaper industry. Most sales reps spend most of their time servicing existing accounts and too little time prospecting for new business. What would happen if your people started spending 50 percent of their time prospecting for new business? I bet there would be explosive growth in your advertising revenue.

This is not going to happen without your leadership. People just don’t develop that kind of discipline by themselves.

They need you to set the expectations around prospecting activity and around prospecting results. What would happen if you:

• Required your sales reps to call 30 new prospects each day?

• Expected one appointment set with a non-advertiser each day?

• Expected one third of each rep’s revenue per month to be new revenue?

I believe that when you receive this level of prospecting in your organization, your ad revenues will be back to 2007 levels.

Bob Davis is the president of Robert C. Davis and Associates (www.robertcdavis.net). He specializes in creating custom programs that deliver measurable results for the newspaper industry. Bob is also co-founder of Surpass (www.surpasscalls.com), an outsource call center serving the needs of newspapers across the country.