I will answer you upfront – chance. And though chance affects every aspect of our life and sales in particular, in those two moments it has more grip. And can define your quota’s achievements “to be or not to be”. Listen up y’all…

Let’s first define prospecting – as a set of linked activities done with purpose to interest and “qualify” a new Customer in terms of either MEDDPICC, BANT or other methodology. Then let’s define closing as obtaining a Purchase Order within forecasted period, by acting accordingly to prepared plan (Project, Sales Cycle, Strategy – bla bla you name it). One is the beginning other is the end. For both we have:

1. STRUCTURE:
   – Prospecting – a prospecting methodology, contact cadence (how many contacts via what channels with what frequency), content to share etc.
   – Closing – defined criteria of success, commercial process, deadlines
   
2. PEOPLE: usually the same though the further you move into sales process the more people appear. What unify them is they usually belong to one Account you work with (usually!).
   
3. PRESSURE:
   – Prospecting – how many opportunities to hit your target depends on it
   – Closing – how well you will perform against your target depends on it

Your closing depends on your prospecting. Period. The main difference between them is closing needs to get you more engaged and knowledgable about state of account.

In closing you engage yourself more because the prize is near. It is kind of like marriage – you think about living together, paying the bills, having family and generally long lasting relationship. But because of this engagement you are more prone to miss warning signs (my boss used to say “Sales has happy ears” – meaning they filter is focused on good info and sometimes misses bad). And this is chance in closing – someone goes sick and cannot sign, there is emergency (e.g. right now we have energy crisis which significantly shifted budgets and… let’s say I was not expecting that level of change).

In prospecting as we simply do not know if our prospect Company has the resources to engage in the project (and if we create it from “scratch” – it usually take months to come near the closure). Or maybe they are just researching and by proactiveness you cemented first position in terms of Customer Experience. It is like approaching a potential partner in the club… Maybe you are in her type but she’s not in the mood. Or maybe she is. And this is the chance in prospecting. You can be great, but it can simply not be the moment. Or you can simply hit the exactly right moment in Customer’s purchasing process.

What is heart-warming is in prospecting if you try to understand people – they will usually come back to you once the time is right.

There is no way to control chance (like uncertainty) – but you can minimize it. Now this will be hard to swallow but… Prospect more, close less. Meaning the more your prospect and qualify the more deals will actually close (by “close less” I mean have less deals in the “closure phase” but have them better qualified).