In every activity that is measured (selling, sports, elections, etc.) there is a core set of fundamentals that all participants understand inherently but only the best practice religiously.  And of that core set of fundamentals, there is usually one basic activity that governs performance for the entire group of fundamentals.  The greatest performers in any profession execute this fundamental routinely and with more diligence than their lesser performing peers.

Consider the world of sports.  Larry Bird stayed after practice to take 1,000’s of shots when he was the only person in the gym.  Josh Hamilton takes 1,000’s of swings in batting practice beyond what the average baseball player does.  Vijay Singh is famous for staying on the range even after a successful round of golf, taking 1,000’s of practice shots to continually hone his game.

Likewise in business, we label top salespeople as a “natural sales person”.  It’s also assumed that these individuals are successful by some innate ability to sell in any circumstance at any time.  I’ve known plenty of so-called “natural salesman” who shined at one point in time during their career.  But eventually even these “naturals” stumble and fall, and it’s almost due to ignoring or lacking execution in the fundamentals.

We all know what the selling fundamentals are, it’s a core group of activities including closing, qualifying, nurturing, negotiating, leading, managing and differentiating – but the core fundamental to them all is prospecting.  Now sometimes the naturals can subsist on that larger list of fundamental skills in the previous sentence, but when they fail, it’s almost always due to the latter core fundamental, which is prospecting.  And what do you hear from the naturals when they fail?  It’s the economy, or competition, or some other market dynamic.  Yet when the naturals fail, I guarantee you there is an every day rep in their industry that got through these market challenges because day after day, week after week, they diligently prospected and kept their sales funnel full.  Like Larry Bird, Josh Hamilton and Vijay Singh, they took 1,000’s of shots.

Case in point – when you ask most sales people what they dread the most, the answer is almost universally prospecting.  It gets put off because it is seen as a necessary evil, been given a negative connotation like “cold calling”.  We’d rather push lead generation off to marketing, or wait for our web site to deliver the goods, but not take ownership ourselves.

There’s an interesting parallel in NCAA Division I and NBA basketball.  Many great scorers (natural athletes) are poor free throw shooters.  This seems counter-intuitive.  If the player can make a basket with defenders hanging all over them, why can’t they make an unguarded shot from a minor distance?  When the great free throw shooters are posed this question, hall-of-famers like Rick Barry, Calvin Murphy, and Larry Bird, their answer is simple.  They had a high free throw % because they routinely shot 1,000’s of free throws during the course of their careers.  Their peers chose not to because free throws, like prospecting, are a mundane activity of their profession.  But I’ve always noticed that the greatest performers found ways to make these mundane activities interesting.  Whether it was a personal challenge to better a previous mark, or betting the player in the cube next to them on who could contact the most leads, or simply not making excuses for lack of performance.

So how many of you chose to prospect to 1,000’s of leads last quarter?  Before you claim that there is not enough time to achieve this, consider these options:

• Did you try to align with your marketing department to increase the number and potential of your pipeline?
• Did you consider new sales process techniques to increase your prospecting productivity?
• Did you do what Larry, Josh and Vijay do … keep shooting or swinging even when everyone else has gone home?