White Collar Prospecting

About the Book

Introduction:  You are Good Enough at Sales, Get Better at This …

Why did I call this book White Collar Prospecting?  Is it because I don’t like, or respect blue-collar work?  No, not at all.  I grew up in Marion, Indiana.  You could not grow up in a more blue-collar General Motors factory town.  I’ve also worked my fair share of blue-collar jobs as a kid and young adult.  For most of my sales career I’ve had a blue-collar attitude towards prospecting.  Acting like a bulldozer, endlessly cold calling and emailing prospects with a never-quit attitude, embracing rejection as a badge of honor.

But over the past decade I’ve noticed a trend.  Cold prospecting doesn’t work as well at is used to.  And this shouldn’t surprise anyone because times have simply changed.  About a century ago technology enabled salespeople to canvas neighborhoods door-to-door.  It was the automobile that magnified their sales efforts and allowed them to cover larger territories more efficiently.

Then another technology came along, the telephone shifted selling from door-to-door to the more efficient over-the-phone.  Then technology changed selling again – TV and radio enabled sales messages to harness sight, sound and motion and moved selling from one-on-one to a more efficient one-to-many opportunity.

And now, once again, technology has changed selling.  Now it’s the internet, email, smartphones, the shift to automation, and the growth in artificial intelligence.  Realize this:  Prospects are busier than ever.  They have more choices, and better information.  They have more salespeople calling on them than ever before.  Most importantly, prospects buy differently today than they did just 10 years ago.

But for a variety of reasons, many sales organizations still cling to cold prospecting as their primary method to develop new business … ignoring the potential of technology … and marketing … while wasting the valuable time and energy of their salespeople. 

Here’s what I realized:  I’m good enough at sales.  You are probably good enough at selling too.  Most of us who’ve been selling our entire lives have attained enough muscle memory to be a competent closer.  Put me, or you, in a room with a good prospect, and we’ll have a pretty good chance of closing that sale.  For most sales professionals, our lack of sales skills is largely not the problem.  The problem for most salespeople today is getting the attention of our most desirable prospects.

The real challenge is getting the opportunity to sell, getting the appointment.  One of my favorite movies (and books) of all time is Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  Billy Bean, the General Manager, had to rebuild his team (The Oakland A’s) every season because big market teams (like the Yankees) could pay his players more money.  Billy’s team was essentially a farm system for richer teams.  So, he decided to play a different game. 

Billy became the first GM in professional sports to rely on data to select his players. Prior to this, choosing who to draft, and pay millions to, was based entirely on human judgement.  In essence, evaluating talent was a crapshoot, done manually and prone to bias and severe misjudgment by the most experienced scouts. 

But in the traditional world of baseball, this is how scouting had always been done … and nobody thought there was anything wrong with it …  Until Billy Beane got tired of losing to the Yankees.  His data-based approach focused on a single stat that measured a player’s contribution to winning:  On-Base Percentage.

More players on base = more runs scored = more wins.  A similar metric exits in sales. In sales, it’s Getting Appointments with Good Prospects. More meetings = more presentations = more sales.

Billy’s focus on OBP enabled him to find players who weren’t on the radar of richer teams – meaning he could afford these players with his small-market budget.  His approach caused an uproar in the baseball establishment.  Outrage, anger, disbelief, doubt, resentment – even from his own scouts and players. His own manager didn’t even support him.  He risked losing his job, because early on, they didn’t win. But about midway through the season, things began to click.  The Oakland A’s went on a record-setting 20-game win streak.  That record stands to this day. That year, Billy changed professional sports forever.  And in the world of sales, there is similar old-school mentality that still exists.  It’s a reliance, and stubborn, sometimes nostalgic insistence on blue-collar cold prospecting. When it has been clearly proven – and demonstrated – that technology and marketing can help in this process.  And to deny it, to not embrace it, to not study it, to not learn from it, is to act like one of those old baseball curmudgeons who refused to believe in data.  Another thing Billy says in the movie to one of his old-school scouts:  Adapt or die.  Darn right.  If you are in sales, and work for a sales organization who requires you to cold call and cold email prospects to find new business, this book is for you.  If you would like to learn how clever, low-cost marketing can turn you into a person who follows up with and attracts clients (rather than chasing them), read on.

To your success!

About the Author

Shane Nichols started his professional career in college selling advertising for the campus newspaper. He quickly emerged as a sales leader, getting promoted to sales manager. And this has been the story throughout his career, transitioning from newspaper to magazines, from magazines to radio, from radio to television, from television to sports sponsorship, Shane is a recognized leader and award-winning seller wherever he goes. Shane published his first book, The Intelligent Advertiser: The Definitive Guide to Finding Value in Broadcast Media, in 2018. And The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Advertisers, was published in the fall of 2020. Both are available on Amazon.