Find what’s slowing your prospecting.
Four steps to review your week, find where progress stops, and choose one useful change.
Erik Meier, founder and CEO of EAM Consulting Group, coaches sales teams. Dan Stalp co-owned a benefits brokerage before running a Sandler training business. Their advice tackles a familiar problem: you’ve had a busy week, but prospecting isn’t moving. Do you need more activity, a better conversation, or a different approach?
In this guide, we draw on our interviews with these two sales pros to walk through a prospecting review in four practical steps. You’ll look behind the activity totals, check what actually happened, and choose a change worth trying.
Read on, then use the accompanying worksheet to review your own week. You’ll have a clear record of the work, a problem to investigate, and one change with an owner and a review date.
Start with the work you can see.
Dan has heard the objection: we’ll track this once the CRM is sorted out. He starts smaller. A few honest counts can show where the work is going, even while the tools are catching up.
“you can form the habit with pencil and paper.”
For a call review, count each dial as an attempt, a two-way exchange with a prospect as a conversation, and a next step only when both sides agree on an action and timing. A voicemail isn’t a conversation.
Choose one period, channel, and customer group. Keep them separate from other activity so the counts are comparable. A founding AE and founder can then inspect the same work instead of arguing over what “busy” means.
Choose the right problem to solve.
Erik asks whether the work needs more, better, or different. You may need more useful attempts, a stronger message or conversation, or a different target. Check the plan as well as its execution. Start where progress seems to stop; the counts suggest a question, not a proven cause.
“Sometimes it is more, but sometimes just better and sometimes it’s different, right?”
More
Too few useful attempts. Check the target, capacity, and whether the work happened.
Better
The message or conversation isn’t landing. Review the actual outreach and response.
Different
The people or problem don’t fit. Revisit the target or approach.
Read the notes before changing the plan.
Dan uses the gaps between attempts, conversations, and meetings to decide where coaching might help. The count points you toward the question. The actual work helps you answer it.
The calls happened. Check who owns the problem.
Imagine one week of 40 first calls to 40 people in one segment. Thirty-two go to voicemail. Of eight conversations, six point to another department. Two people describe a relevant problem; one agrees to a follow-up, the other has no reason to act now.
Check the six referrals before changing the message. Compare the roles they name with the people involved in your customer wins. If they point to the same role, that gives you a target to try. If you have no wins yet, check who owns the issue in the next conversations.
Fictional example, not a benchmark or customer result. Eight conversations justify a closer look; they don’t prove the whole market is wrong.
Give the next week a clear job.
Erik says a shared process helps show what needs changing. Keep enough steady to learn from the adjustment. Changing audience, message, and channel together makes the result harder to explain.
For the example, Alex will call ten people in the role the six notes point to, at similar companies. Keep the message and channel steady. Review on Friday: do these people own the problem? If the wrong-role pattern continues, revisit the target; if it changes, keep checking before expanding.
Dan reminds us that sales arrive unevenly. Review the work weekly, but judge sales over a period that fits your sales cycle.
Know what to change next?
Use these four checks before rewriting the whole plan.
Start with the first unchecked item.
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If the obstacle is preparing contacts and keeping the daily work organized, take a look at Topsail ONE. We prepare the contacts and next steps around your approach. You bring the judgment and have the conversations.
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