Let’s be honest about cold calling: it’s not a lot of laughs. Perhaps the reason cold calling is disliked, and often fails, is because we have the wrong goals and expectations for the exercise.
Sales is a high-rejection business. We get more “no’s” than “yes’s”. That’s the truth. The other truth about sales is we need to find more ways to celebrate in addition to closing the sale. Often salespeople experience failure with cold calling in two ways:
- They fear the rejection, procrastinate, and fail to prospect at all
- They don’t have a systematic process and their “head trash” leads to unsuccessful prospecting
Who in their right mind would want to do that?
You’d better sit down because you’re not going to agree with this if you come from a traditional sales or sales management background. The objective of cold calling is not to make a sale. The objective of cold calling is to:
- Find someone who has problems that your product or service can fix
- Get invited to discuss those issues
Without those two qualifications, we don’t go to the meeting.
Our goal in cold calling is to set a specific part of each day to make cold calls. In advance of that time prepare a list of prospects to call. Have the commitment that nothing will stop you from making the calls that you planned at the time you allotted. If you do that, you can celebrate regardless of the results. The big win is to get the meeting with a qualified prospect, but when you do the behaviors – that’s a win too.
Success in cold calling is making the calls. Are you making the calls?
You might also be interested in: