Want to energize your sales team and fill your pipeline? A well-run prospecting day could be your secret weapon. Just ask our largest customer - a NASDAQ-listed company that has turned monthly prospecting days into a cornerstone of their sales strategy.
What is prospecting?
Every sale starts with finding the right prospects. While the term originates from gold miners panning streams for precious nuggets, today's sales prospecting is about identifying and connecting with potential customers who could benefit from your product or service.
Just as prospectors needed the right tools and techniques to find gold, sales teams need effective strategies to discover qualified leads. It's the crucial first step in any sales process - finding those valuable opportunities that could convert into actual customers.
What is a prospecting day?
Think of a prospecting day as your sales team's version of a sprint. It's a focused, high-energy event where your entire team dedicates themselves to finding and connecting with potential customers. By adding elements of friendly competition and gamification, you transform what could be a mundane task into an engaging team event that not only fills your pipeline but also strengthens team bonds.
Ready to run your own prospecting day? Here are 10 proven strategies to make it a success.
Checklist for your prospecting day
Follow this checklist to make sure things go right.
✅ Commit to a date
The day has to be blocked well in advance — it's reserved for prospecting and nothing else. This is a day when you have no other commitments, no demos, no meetings, nothing.
Aim to repeat the day once a month.
✅ Choose a theme
This is totally optional, but it will greatly increase the fun had by all. It'll also make it easier to pick the games or activities.
Some theme ideas are:
- March Madness
- Game of Thrones
- Disney's Frozen
- Xmas, Easter, Thanksgiving
- Murder mystery
- ... you get the idea.
✅ Prepare a list of prospects
Preparation is key. Having a list of who you are going to call on during your prospecting day helps make the most of your time. You absolutely do not want to be creating this list on the day itself.
Make sure you're prepped with what kinds of prospects you need to call:
- Do they need to be in a certain market?
- Do they need to be completely new to the company?
✅ Use activities / games and have prizes
This will not only make the whole day much more fun, but will additionally motivate your team. We previously wrote about games and activities here. Go to that post to get an idea of games and activities you could try.
✅ Have a structure to the day
A day filled with phone calls can be pretty intense, so make sure you have a structure that includes breaks, breakfast, lunch and ideally some team drinks at the end.
Here's how you could do it.
- 8.30-9am: Breakfast. This is essential and allows you to give some pep talks beforehand.
- 9-10am: Activity 1
- 10.30-12pm: Activity 2
- 12-1pm: Lunch
- 1-2pm: Activity 3
- 2.30-3.30pm: Activity 4
- 4-5pm: Activity 5
✅ Have a script
Make sure you're prepared with the content that you need to speak on. Think about the goals you want to achieve. Are you looking to book meetings? Are you focussing on a particular product in your portfolio? This all needs to be worked out in advance.
You should also have a script ready for how to respond to multiple different "no" responses you may hear.
✅ Touch base beforehand
Consider making an initial touch with your list of prospects before you call them. This will "soften" them up and get your product or company on their radar.
Maybe send an email introducing the company and product so when you call, they have a bit of familiarity.
✅ Know who makes the decisions
Do you know who the "decision maker" at the prospect company is? If so, try to schedule your meeting with them.
✅ Be prepared to hear "can you send me info in an email?"
A lot of companies have trained receptionists to screen for calls from sales people. You may want to consider having scripts ready for how to break through to the person you actually want to speak with.
✅ Keep score with a dashboard
Finally, you need to make sure you're keeping score. The easiest way to do this is by using Post-Its or a whiteboard. If your event it remote then you might consider using some kind of online dashboard.
Using a KeeptheScore Leaderboard
A more compact way of showing progress is by using one of our leaderboards.
An online leaderboard from Keepthescore.com
To create one, proceed as follows:
- Create a Leaderboard by clicking the button above 👆
- Choose the Leaderboard type
- Enter the name of each team member
- Click on "Create your leaderboard"
- Your leaderboard has been created!
- Under SETTINGS > Rankings and scores Change your Score suffix to Prospects
- That's it, you are ready to go!
