Sovereign Seller Email #36: Prospecting Is Marketing

Sunday, May 10th, 2026

Indianapolis, IN

7:11 AM

I never needed to learn how to prospect.

I worked for big media brands on purpose because they came with built-in demand.

The phone actually rang.

Cold calling was for other people - those who didn’t work for a near monopoly.

Fast forward to 2017, I get laid off from an ad-agency management role, moved back to Indianapolis, and went back into sales.

This time at the #1 TV station in the market, a station I had always wanted to work for.

I expected what I remembered from years earlier. Reps making tons of money. Advertisers beating down their doors to spend money with them.

But the market had moved.

There were 10x more advertising choices than when I’d left - social, digital, streaming, podcasts.

This (by the way) is true of almost every industry. There are more choices and more competition than ever before.

When I sold broadcast media in the 2000’s, I’d easily command 40-50% of any media budget. Now I was scraping for 10-20%.

Business owners who used to take our meetings now wouldn’t return my calls or emails.

For the first time in my career, I had to actually prospect.

And once I got good at it, I realized this:

I got better at Prospecting when I realized it was “Marketing”

Prospecting isn’t selling - it positions you for the sale.

Done right, you can go from calling cold to following up - because the prospect knows your company by the time you reach out. Even better, they reach out to you first - the ultimate position.

Cold calling and cold emailing with no plan?

That’s not prospecting either.

Not only is this inefficient for sales organizations, it’s brutal on sellers, contributes to massive turnover, and makes recruiting even tougher.

Real prospecting is six functions. Every one of them is marketing:

1. Copywriting. Subject lines, openers, voicemail scripts, follow-up sequences. Words that earn a response from someone who didn’t ask to hear from you. Here’s a great book on this topic. → The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joseph Sugarman​
2. List building. Who, in what segment, in what role, with what trigger. Who is your ideal customer? Without a list you have no map. Book → The Ultimate Marketing Plan by Dan S. Kennedy​
3. Offer design. What are you actually inviting them into? A meeting? An audit? A 10‑minute call to share intel they don’t have? What is your unique selling point? Why should they take time to hear you out? Book → $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi​
4. Channel mix. Most only use the phone and email. You need to add in others like LinkedIn, direct mail, events, referrals, canvassing and more. Book → Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount​
5. Trigger detection. Selling opportunities are created by change … Funding, hiring, leadership change, a competitor’s stumble. The signal that says reach out now. Book → SHiFT! Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers by Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto​
6. Direct‑response math. Sends, opens, replies, meetings, conversion rate. What’s working, at what rate, against which list. Book → No B.S. Direct Marketing by Dan S. Kennedy​

Become a Marketer Instead of a Laborer

When prospecting is “sales activity,” the unit of work becomes activity.

Calls. Dials. Touches. Emails sent. Connect requests.

That’s what gets measured, coached, and compensated.

When prospecting is marketing, the unit becomes response.

Replies. Booked meetings. Conversion rate against a defined list.

That’s what marketers measure. That’s what moves money.

Activity is what laborers measure.

Response is what marketers measure.

A company that pays you on activity will keep paying you on activity.

They’ll pay you for a day of dials. They will not pay you for a day of thinking.

Someone who accepts that prospecting is marketing changes the unit.

They walk in with response data. Replies per send. Meetings per touchpoint. Conversion rate by channel.

They negotiate against numbers nobody else on the sales team is tracking.

Different unit, different conversation, different paycheck.

Entrepreneurial skills travel with you - Marketing is one of them.

Labor skills don’t - the ability to make calls and withstand rejection isn’t as useful to you or future employers.

Think about this …

In any market, there are roughly 10,000 reps. They show up, hit their numbers, get reorganized every two years, some get laid off in the next downturn. They are interchangeable, and somewhere underneath, they know it.

There are maybe 100 reps in that same market doing marketing. They build their own lists. Write their own copy. Run their own multi-channel sequences. Track response by hand if the company won’t track it for them.

Those 100 are un-fireable. Not ONLY because they outperform … it’s because they’re not easily replaceable.

The 22-year-old SDR is replaceable. The high-activity AE is replaceable.

The marketer who can close sales is not.

It’s the combination of creating your own selling opportunities + closing that will make you a Sovereign Seller.

That’s the career. That’s the leverage.

So here’s the move this week. Review your last week against those six functions.

Find the one you’ve never seriously done, buy a book … and dive in.

You just might have a natural talent for one (or more) of these skills.

To your prospecting success,

Shane

P.S. White Collar Prospecting is the long-form version of the email you just read - the full operating manual for running a marketing department of one inside a sales org that doesn’t know what to do with you yet. Free. WhiteCollarProspecting.com