How Sales Development is EXACTLY Like Working Out

New Year’s resolutions generally don’t work.

You say you’re going to get up every morning starting January 1st and run a mile.

But you do it once—maybe twice—and not in the morning but in the evening.

The reason you didn’t stick to it wasn’t for lack of want, but because your plan was arbitrary.

You had a vision for the outcome, but not the journey.

And it cost you success.

Business Development is exactly the same. You can’t just imagine what it would be like to have new clients coming in. You have to exercise that new client muscle—repeatedly.

Here’s how you do just that.

Don’t “Max Out” on Week 1

If you’re just starting to work out, the last thing you want to do is “max out.” That’s lifting as much weight as you can for one rep, which tells you just how strong you really are.

Let’s be honest—you know you’re not really strong, because you haven’t lifted weights in two years.

Right now, knowing your max isn’t nearly as important as getting a good workout in.

And in Biz Dev, hitting your entire email database won’t do you much good without a strong message.

Lesson #1: Hitting your entire email database won’t do you much good without a strong message.

So first, you need to get in some reps.

You can do this by talking with your customers, and doing a lot more listening than speaking.

You need to learn how they describe the problems they have, and how your product helped solved them.

You need to hear your customers say it because that’s how other folks in their same position will explain it.

That’s how it resonates.

So talk with some customers. Start with 4 or 5 this week, and do another round next week.

You need to speak with at least a dozen customers—no joke.

Only then will you start to identify commonalities among them, and learn their language.

This is getting the soreness out, so to speak.

We’re not doing any heavy lifting just yet.

We’re listening.

Don’t Expect Results in 30 Days

With the exception of boxers cutting weight for a fight, it’s really not feasible to see your abdominal muscles in 30 days.

Even with regular exercise, you’re not going to see obvious results right away.

First, you have to learn what you’re doing.

So you’ve talked with a few customers now, and understand how they describe their struggles.

You’ve got the soreness out.

Now it’s time to tailor your workouts to what you actually want to achieve.

Maybe you’re looking to lose weight, or widen your shoulders. Or could be you’re trying to strengthen your legs for hiking the Appalachian Trail this summer.

Whatever your goal, you want to tailor your workout to achieve just that.

So, you know you want to target a certain persona, and you know the problem they have.

Next you’ll need to test different messages on to see which ones get engagement.

Lesson #2: Test different messaging on similar audiences to see which ones get engagement—then consistently deliver that message.

Just like with working out, you’ll need to do different exercises on the same muscle group to grow it.

Over time, you’ll see that you don’t need to do eight different exercises for biceps, but just the three that work best.

These three exercises—or messages in the case of sales prospecting—are the ones that will bring you genuine, interested leads.

This is how you build consistent pipeline with sales prospecting.

But know, just like working out, it’ll still take time to grow.

Even when you find the right message and deliver it consistently to the right audience, you’ll still need to keep it up for a few months to see real results.

Just like you don’t expect abs in 30 days, don’t expect to close a million dollar deal when you’re still testing things.

Aim for Exponential Returns

A world-renowned martial arts trainer by the name of Firas Zahabi applies a simple principle to help his athletes win.

He wants his athletes to have put in more training time than their opponent when they step in the ring to fight.

Zahabi believes more training time gives them the best opportunity to win the fight over their opponent, regardless of other factors.

And it’s worked like a charm.

Zahabi has trained several world champions, including George St. Pierre—arguably the greatest MMA fighter of the last decade.

So how does Zahabi guarantee more training time than every single opponent?

He doesn’t let his athletes train to exhaustion.

Instead of letting them train really hard for three days a week, he asks them to train with intermediate intensity, six times per week.

While the 3-day workout is more strenuous, the 6-day plan allows you to put more hours in at the gym.

So you’re swapping three, 90-minute workouts for six, 1-hour workouts.

That means you’ll spend 6 hours in the gym each week—not 4.5.

Over the period of a year, that’s 78 more hours of training, or a rate of 133% of your opponents “100%.”

I offer this simple math problem to show how consistency is better than intensity over the long haul.

Lesson #3: Consistency is better than intensity over the long haul. Consistent email marketing will help your business grow.

Consistently working the BizDev muscles will help your business grow.

But sporadic, intense waves of BizDev won’t get you there as fast—or as efficient.

Your business pipeline needs consistency more than it needs intensity.

And if you can’t be that consistent on your own, that’s where RevBoss steps in.

We’ll go to the gym for you

I’m not gonna lie to you—you’ll have to get the soreness out yourself.

Talking with customers, understanding their business, and learning their problems will be your responsibility.

But once that’s done, and you know what messages (exercises) you’re going to be doing on the reg’, we can actually go to the gym for you.

We’ll make sure you’re being consistent, and putting in the legwork to actually reach out to new prospects.

When something worthwhile comes along, we’ll let you know.

Kinda how a FitBit congratulates you on 10,000 steps, we’ll be running in the background and only ping you when there’s something worth celebrating.

If you want to grow your business, and you’re considering outsourcing your sales development, hit us up.

We can confidently say we’re experts in sales dev because we’ve put in the reps.

And we can help you do the same.