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Cold Calling Works - And It's Fun!

Written by: Sharon Drew Morgen

Article Overview: I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects. And a whole lotta fun. I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face. Did you ever ask yourself why?

Cold Calling Works - And It's Fun!

I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects. And a whole lotta fun.

I know, I know. Most sellers eschew cold calling, preferring instead to network, get referrals, golf, meet face-to-face.

Did you ever ask yourself why?

We can think historically: Dale Carnegie, in How to win friends and influence people published in 1937, told us to meet prospects in person (and his choices then were….. were what?). We can think about trying to ‘get through’ the gatekeeper. We can think about trying to gather information or pitch productwith no ability to understand or share personal expressions on a phone.

So let’s say we do our networking, getting referrals, golfing, and meeting in person. What does it give us? Sadly, we’re just making ourselves feel better because it doesn’t help us closemore deals. Indeed, until or unless a prospect has managed their behind-the-scenes systems (culture, environment) issues and gets buy-in at all levels, nothing will happen whether they need us or like us.

The bigger problem is how to help buyers manage those off-line issues, because until they do, our sterling personalities are immaterial: If we shift our focus – and our skills – from making a sale to helping manage the internal decision issues, we can use the phone effectively ANDmake a sale in at least half the time.

WHY ARE WE CONNECTING?

Let’s begin with the question: Why are we attempting to make contact?

If we are trying to sell, to push a product, to attempt to influence with our personal charm, then I agree; cold calling sucks.

But if we are trying to help buyers make a buying decision, cold calling is wonderful. Remember that Buying Facilitation®employs a totally different skill set than sales, with a different outcome. We are actually employing a decision facilitation skill set to the off-line portion of the buying decision, and then employing our sales skills.

Given the space we’ve got on a blog post, I’ll give you a simpleexample.

I read about California Closets in the late 1990s and wanted to have them deliver Buying Facilitation®throughout their franchises. I did some research, and found what I later discovered to be a ‘bad’ number – but at the moment I called, it turned out to be a lucky error. A man answered:

SDM: Hi. My name is Sharon Drew Morgen, and I’m an author and developer of a new selling model. This is a sales call. Is this a good time to speak?

EL: No. It’s terrible. But I’ll give you 5 minutes.

SDM: I can call back. It’s only a sales call and I don’t want to disturb you. We didn’t have an appointment

EL: Let’s start now and we can finish later. I already like your style. How can I help you?

SDM: Thanks. And at any point you want to end, we can stop and pick it up at another time. I was wondering how you are currently adding new sales skills to the ones you’re currently training your sales people and designers.

EL: Are you using the model you’re teaching? Because if you are, I’m buying. I’ve been looking for a new model for 2 years, and from what I’m hearing, I’m happy. How ‘bout if I get the heads of Sales and Training on a call next week, and think about doing training, or training our trainers at the end of January. Call me in a week at this number: XXXXX. Nice job.

And he hung up. We’ve been working together since then. And this was a cold call. Of course, I did get a bit lucky. But if I had used conventional sales techniques, these folks would not have been my clients – even if I had managed to get in front of them

DON’T USE YOUR BODY AS A PROSPECTING TOOL

When I understand that my job is to be in a ‘We Space’ (the conversation was all about him) and truly serve by helpingdiscover how to move toward excellence, it doesn’t matter if I’m in person or on the phone, because there is no manipulation or personal persuasion tactics. Also, the focus of the entire call at this earlystageis about the internal issues they need to manage (that a seller can never be a part of) within their system. It’s not about their need, or our solution. Sales does that way too early.

In the Buying Facilitation®model, every interaction, every comment, is based on helping buyers traverse their off-linebuy-in issues. I understand that my solution can only be purchased AFTER buyers have managed the needed buy-in. And the telephone is a very handy tool. Of course, once the buyer manages their off-line decision issues internally, and their decision team discovers it’s ready to change and add a new solution, it willneed to know moreabout our solution. THEN we can go visit them, and the entire Buying Decision Team will be there, with us on it. Try it. You might like it :)

So focusing on each cold call as if it were a puzzle, and you are the puzzle master who is not in front of the puzzle, but whispering in the ear of the person doing the puzzle, you can have fun. You won’t have to try to get an appointment, you’ll save travel time and funds, you’ll find a whole lot more prospects, and when you do go to the client site, it will be to sign the contract.

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Article Tags: cold calling, prospects, referrals, whole lotta



Related Forum Posts
Re: How to develop sales contacts? - Everyone has the right idea here. Depending on your business, there are different techniques that you could use. For consultants and sales heavy businesses, there are three tactics that I have found especially useful in my business: 1. Attend Networking Events 2. Cold Calling 3. Referral Program 4. Affiliate Program (most successful) The affiliate program was successful for me, as I hooked up with a franchise consultant, and he gave multiple unit businesses that needed my credit card processing services. I highly suggest you hook up with a sales partner, and give him a cut of the monthly revenue.
Re: Direct Mail Postcards - Post cards would be really expensive to send from Japan...but one way to advertise that is not expensive from overseas is by Cold Calling using cheap VoIP equipment. I know Japan has a really good internet connection, so as long as you are willing to stay up late, it might be an option. I cold call from Thailand far, far away from any city using a CDMA wireless internet connection and have had pretty good results. I find tho, that cold calling works best for business 2 business (b2b), rather than b2c products. --matt
Re: Cold Calling - As long as people are out of jobs, you'll probably have a lot of people who say they want to work for straight commission, but if they don't get paid fairly quickly, they usually move on. We've run into that and went through about 500 people (whose resumes looked really good) until we found about 3 good resellers. People just don't want to work for anything. Or they do a good job getting the business but don't do the follow up necessary to make the sale......so they move on thinking they need money NOW. Our business requires all cold calling as well. It's really tough for people to perfect that but there are a lot of good books out there. On is Cold Calling Techniques, by Stephan Schiffman
Re: Cold Calling - Cold calling is an extremely difficult job to do and unless one learns that being told no by people is not a direct refusal aimed at the cold caller but at whatever is being sold, it can be very soul destroying work to do. One needs to have absolute confidence in themselves and a pretty thick skin. MichelleJ
Re: DropBox.com - Hey Evan, I just started using their service very recently. I'm currently using their free 2GB storage option. I mainly got it to send large-sized files to other people, as sometimes uploading to my web host server can become problematic and not work. I searched around for online storage options and landed on their site. Works great and very easy to share files with others. I currently have a 1TB external drive I backup all of my computer data on. Maybe someday I'll consider online backup, just for added protection of my files.


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