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Cold Calls Anyone?

Written by: Laura Posey

Article Overview: Does cold calling work anymore? If so, when and how should you do it? If it doesn't what should you do instead?

Cold Calls Anyone?

There is a tremendous amount of debate in the selling world about cold calling and whether it’s useful or not. Typically sales managers love it and salespeople hate it. Let’s break it down and see who is right and why.

It’s essential when discussing any method of prospecting to understand what the purpose of the method is before undertaking it. Many a salesperson has misunderstood what they were supposed to get out of cold calling and because of that misplaced expectation, they quit doing something that could have been a really good use of their time. Getting appointments is not the purpose of cold calling (all of you managers who just fell off your chairs, get up and keep reading- you’ll like the rest of this). If you start calling thinking you’re going to get a high rate of appointments you’ll be horribly disappointed. The fact is, for appointment setting alone, cold calling is very ineffective. Really good callers only expect to get about 10% of their calls to yield appointments. Compared to referrals or other methods of prospecting, 10% stinks. Again, if you get the purpose wrong and think calling yields a high percentage of appointments, you’ll get frustrated and quit. Don’t.

The purpose of cold calling is to determine if the person you are calling has any predisposed interest in what you’re selling. That’s it. Cold calling is a really efficient way of separating your prospect list into the categories “yes, I’d like to know more” (this is where the appointment setting happens!) or “no, that’s just not important to me right now). If you have a really great introduction in your script and you really understand and communicate the benefits of your product succinctly and clearly you’ll find more folks in the “yes” category than if you just do the same old junk every other caller does. The better your script, the more effective your calls become. You can really separate the interested from the not interested and save yourself valuable time later in the sales process.

One big key here is to take whatever answer you get and move on. If they want to investigate your product more, then set an appointment. If they aren’t interested for whatever reason, accept that and move on. Don’t spend any time trying to talk them into being interested- it won’t happen. The best you’ll do is get an appointment you won’t ever close and the worst is you’ll tick them off and ruin any chance of every making a sale.

There is such a thing as just not being interested in something. I hate to burst your bubble, but most people don’t go around all day desperately wanting what you’re selling. Most people are too wrapped up in their mundane, day-to-day living to pay attention to the stuff that’s really wrong with their lives or their businesses. That means that you and your product just aren’t on their radar. So when you call out of the blue and want to get in front them for just a few minutes (we’ll talk in another column about why that stinks) they don’t want to talk because they really aren’t interested right now. You’re essentially interrupting things they care about – working, feeding the kids, etc- to talk about they don’t care about. It’s like a commercial break in the middle of the daily show they are engrossed in. It’s annoying and likely to make them change the channel and hang up on you. We’ve all been the victim of unwanted, pushy solicitors. Why would you want to act like them? Just don’t.

So what does this all mean and is cold calling worthwhile or not? I think it is, if you’re using it for the right reason. Cold calling is a very efficient way to go through a large list of potential prospects to find out which ones are likely to buy and which aren’t worth spending time with right now. It’s a fast way to fill your pipeline with reasonably good prospects and get your sales jumpstarted. If you do it well, you won’t irritate the not interested ones and you’ll be able to call them back at a later date to see if something has changed that’s made them interested. All in all, not a bad use of a few hours a week. So, Sales Managers, you can go back to your meetings and tell everyone I said cold calling was a good thing to do!

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Related Forum Posts
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
Cold Calling - Cold calling is tough, but it is possible. Its a shame that your employer doesn't seem to be giving you any help. I would suggest that you learn everything about the products you're trying to sell to the retailers. It wouldn't hurt to have them close at hand while you're on the phone with a potential buyer. Learn what is great about the items. What do they offer the consumer? Why should the retailer carry them? Who would be most likely to buy the items? Once you know these answers, learn about the companies you are calling. Its hard to tell a retailer that your product is something they need - if you don't know anything about their business and/or the customers. If they have a website that would be a great place to research. Shri
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


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