I’ll say that for the majority of my sales career I’ve never had the “luxury” (and I do consider it a luxury) of someone (aka marketing or my own BDR) else warming up things from unawareness… into awareness – to quote Kendra Lee of the KLA Group’s Client Buying Cycle.
So I’ve always relied on what one of my father’s best friends called “brute force and awkwardness.”
When I’m making my initial calls I’m actually working to uncover IF someone is a prospect. I’ve always called it Suspect Mining myself:
- I know enough about their company to suspect they buy what I sell (product/service)
- Based on my industry knowledge I suspect they need what I do (my differentiators from other people they could buy from)
They become a prospect once I’ve had enough conversations that we both know that those two bullets are actually true… ta da awareness, created by ME the salesperson. No it’s not really magic, although every one of those conversations are magical.
So, NO you’re not off the hook for making calls to people who are pre-prospects.
I do suggest you think of those calls differently than you do prospect calls, it will ease your frustration. Instead of looking for an opportunity you have four choices:
- they move from suspect to prospect
- you disqualify that they buy what you sell
- you disqualify that they need what you do (at least for now)
- they stay suspects because you didn’t learn enough in that particular conversation for them to fit into 1 – 2 – 3.
ps: yes please continue to qualify them when you DO run into a business opportunity. It is possible for someone to jump directly from suspect into the opportunity part of your business building pyramid.