Let’s be honest about cold calling. It’s not a lot of laughs. I believe the reason cold calling is disliked and therefore fails is 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 than only making a sale. Sales people fail at prospecting for one of two reasons. One, they don’t like the rejection and therefore justify procrastinating getting started. The other reason is they don’t have a system that sets them up for success; therefore they know they’re going to fail before they start. 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 tradition sales or sales management background. The objective of cold-calling is not to make a sale. The objective of cold calling is to (1) find someone who has problems that your product or service can fix and (2) 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 short of a nuclear holocaust 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.
Success in cold calling is making the calls. Are you making the calls?
You might also be interested in: