Something Old and Something New!, Prospecting with Insight!

I'm sure many of you have heard that: " prospecting is now old fashioned you and should instead be "connecting" through social media."  I don't know about you, but I have a blog, a Twitter account and a presence on LinkedIn and new business is not exactly breaking down my door.  The bottom line is prospecting or if you want "connecting" is still a basic fundamental discipline of effective selling.  I was reminded of this as I listened to the In The Arena podcast of  S.Anthony Iannarino where he interviewed Mike Weinberg  the author of New Sales. Simplified. which was published by AMACOM  in 2013.

Mr. Weinberg is known for being a hunter and he reminded me of some old  truths and simple practices to find new business.  Key among them is Prospecting.  He reminded me of the very simple discipline required of every successful seller.  I had recently fallen into the the trap of blaming a lack of marketing for my lack of new business.  What really was wrong was that I had not blocked time to work on getting the business from the prospects I had prioritized and researched.

So I recommend that you read Mr. Weinberg's book  But then there is the still "something new" that I think you should use to supplement Mr. Weinberg's sage advice.  In your prospecting I recommend you take full advantage of social media.  That you should research your prospects, their industry, their company and their role to discover what insight you can bring to their business, that they did not heretofore know,  and that can help their business.  To assist you I suggest you read Changing the Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate and Close 2015  published by McGraw Hill  and authored by Linda Richardson. She does a particularly good job of showing how to create "insight-led' questions that can help you in your discovery without subjecting your prospect to "questioning fatigue."

To whet your appetite, before committing to buy the books you may want to check out S. Anthony Iannarino's podcast In The Arena.  In separate episodes he speaks to both authors.
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/anthony-iannarino/in-the-arena

Episode 25 Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.
Episode 39 Linda Richardson, Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate, Close