Quit waitingfor crap opportunities to find you and go hunt down theopportunities that look like your current best clients. (Image:Shutterstock)

As we coach agencies and their producers to be more effectivesales organizations and individuals, we share several corephilosophies. One of the tenets of our approach is that sales is atransfer of confidence. In other words, you are always working togive prospects confidence that, by working with you, their businesswill get better results.

Of course, you can't give away what you don't have. You can'tmake that prospect confident in you if you aren'tconfident yourself. Therefore, it is critical to keep yoursales confidence at a peak level.

Related: 10 basic tips to improve your sales prospects thisyear

Kevin Trokey is founding partnerand coach at St. Louis-based Q4intelligence.

While there are several factors that contribute to salesconfidence, one of the most critical factors is to maintain ahealthy pipeline. A healthy pipeline is onethat has the right number of the right opportunities.

Not surprisingly, pipelines are more often a source ofself-doubt than self-confidence.

What's in your pipeline?

Maintaining a healthy pipeline is an almost universal challengefor producers. When discussing this challenge, we dig deep touncover exactly what they are doing, or not doing, to keep theirpipeline filled and healthy.

Often, producers will, with seeming pride, tell me “Oh, I onlywork on referrals.” In theory, this is a terrific idea. Inexecution, it's tragic.

Tell me more about this referral-only approach

When I start to dig into how the producer is executing thisreferral-only approach, it becomes obvious that this is nothingmore than them playing spin doctor with their prospectingefforts.

What it really means is they aren't doing any prospecting ormarketing and are satisfied with simply waiting for whatever comesto them. The resulting book-of-business profile is the tragicpart.

When we analyze the typical book of business, we see that halfof the case count only generates about 6 percent of revenue. Thinkabout that. Half of their book's business generates 6 percent ofrevenue, which means the other half generates 94 percent!

Those producers who sit and wait for opportunities to find themare going to have the worst-profiled books of business of all.

What if a producer got fired by half their clients tomorrow? Ifit's the crap half of their book, it is one of the best businessdays they've ever had. If it's the 94 percent half (please don'ttell my 9th grade math teacher I said that), their game isover.

Waiting is for fools

Quit waiting for crap opportunities to find you and go hunt downthe opportunities that look like your current best clients. If youneed a little motivation, here's a look at the healthiest part of aproducer's book:

While the bottom half of cases typically only generate about 6percent of revenue, the top 5 percent of cases usually generate 30percent of total revenue. Doesn't it make sense to intentionallyseek out opportunities that look like those in your top 5 percentrather than sit and wait for more of those bottom 50 percent-ers toweigh you down even further?

Building a healthy book of business isn't rocket science folks,but it also isn't a waiting game.

Read more: 

• One simple referral tip
• For your next prospecting meeting, forget thebinder
• Who are you hurting when you neglect prospectingcalls?