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On this episode of the Sales Gravy podcast,  Jeb Blount (Virtual Selling) and Alex Goldfayn (5 Minute Selling) discuss the massive impact of small actions, done a little bit, every day. Listen to the other episodes in the series: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Jeb – Does Faith Matter in Sales?

Alex, I’ve got a question for you about faith. This is not a religious question. It’s a faith question.  

You are very convincing human being. You say that sales can be done in 5 minutes a day. Talk to people, call old customers, run the system. It works. 

So, I do it one day. Nothing happens. Then do it the next day and nothing happens. I do it the next day and still nothing happens. Then by the 4th day I’m like, “Alex told me to do this stuff, and I made these phone calls, but I didn’t sell anything. So, I’m going back to sending emails because that’s easier.” 

How important is faith in the system, over a long period of time, to actualizing the five-minute selling process? 

Alex – On Faith in Yourself

Great question. Faith is a great word in sales.  Faith in the system is really about faith in yourself.  

This is important because, in sales we deal with failure and overcoming failure is the key to success. 

Faith is continuing to do the right things even when they’re not working as well as you would like, because they are still the right things.   

In the book I have a two-week challenge: Give me 5-minutes a day for two weeks – that’s 50 minutes over 10 days. That is just five proactive outbound prospecting calls a day.  

If you do that for two weeks, you will find more open opportunities and more close opportunities. It’s just two weeks of faith and here is no way that you won’t improve your sales position.  

Jeb– On The Cumulative Impact of Small Actions

It’s all about cumulative impact. The cumulative impact of small actions every day. Over time, these small actions add up to real numbers.  

But this requires faith because you can’t prospect for a day, you can’t do follow up for a day, you can’t do anything for a day and expect everything to suddenly change. It just doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to do a little bit every day and keep doing it over time.  

Now let me give you the flip side of this question. What happens when it starts working? 

Salespeople have a bad habit of quitting the things that are working. Let’s just say that I give you the two weeks and then it starts working. Then suddenly my pipeline is a little bit bigger, the deals in my pipeline start to move. Suddenly people are actually spending time with me and we’re having conversations.  

What happens then? I get busy and then I quit. How do I make sure that I don’t stop doing what’s working? 

Alex – Staying On Track With Small Daily Actions

You’re totally right. Salespeople are busy. They’re not sitting around. Therefore, the answer is you must schedule proactive, outbound sales calls into your day.  

Mark Twain said, “if you’re gonna eat a frog, you might as well eat it first thing in the morning ’cause it’s not gonna taste any better later in the day.”  

Firstly, do it first thing in the morning – at 8:00 or 8:30 or at 9:00. By 10:00 o’clock you want to be long done with this.  

Second, what do you do if you miss a day? The next day you come back to it and you get right back on track.  

It’s like if you have a bad eating day. I’ve been trying to lose some weight. Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. My wife and I went out to eat and celebrate 19-years. We had a gigantic meal, and a huge dessert. I ate like a jerk, but it was awesome – a fabulous meal.  

So, my weight loss effort over? Am I done? Am I just going to give up and go back to the to the chips and the and the Donuts? nNo, I woke this morning and got back in the saddle. 

The easy way to do this is to use a timer. Set it for five minutes. When the Clock is running, you’re doing your proactive work. You’re making your calls. Then when it dings, your 5 minutes are up.  

Jeb – On High-Intensity Activity Sprints

I love the frog eating analogy.  There’s a chapter in Fanatical Prospecting titled Eat the Frog. The point that I make in that chapter is that you should start your morning doing the hard stuff first because it’s not going to get better for you the rest of the day.  

The timer method is how my mother, who is the most productive human being on Earth, runs her entire day. She carries a little timer with her and breaks everything up into 15-minute blocks.  

For example, she will be in the garden weeding. She sets the timer for 15-minutes and when 15-minutes is over she moves on to the next task in her day.   

Three hours of gardening feels like it’s a lot just like three hours of rejection is too much. But, 15-minutes or 5-minutes, that’s doable.  

And, with just 15-minutes a day of effort, she has a pristine garden. 

Jeb – On Why Cold Calling Days Don’t Work

I had this client who was very serious about getting all of his salespeople in the office on Mondays for cold calling day. When I questioned him about it, he balked, “It’s very important for our company,” he said.  

So, I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll come to your office and we’ll sit together and observed cold calling day so you can show me how it works.”  

At eight o’clock everyone came it, got coffee, and opened their laptops. At 8:30 a sales manager walks out onto the sales floor and says, “Everybody we need to get on the phones.”

The salespeople slowly start calling. Satisfied, the sales manager goes back into her office where she resumes sending emails. 

By 9:00 the salespeople are back up, walking around, getting coffee and talking to each other. The sales manager comes back out tells them to get on the phones.  

This occurs several times. By 11:00, the sales manager has given up and the salespeople are roaming halls.  

The senior leader I was sitting with was stunned. He truly believed that his salespeople were diligently spending 8-hours making cold calls. But this is not how humans work and it is certainly not how salespeople work.  

This is why I’m all about high-intensity prospecting sprints, done a little bit, every day. It’s not about prospecting day, it’s prospecting every day.  Small actions add up. 

Sequencing is the real secret to engaging hard to reach prospects. In our FREE guide Seven Steps to Building Effective Prospecting Sequences, we show you exactly how to build a sales prospecting system that works. Download it Free Now.