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My boss wants me to cold call, but I have call reluctance!

Written by: Trent Leyshan

Article Overview: Words are meaningless without emotion and emotions are very hard to experience over the phone. In fact, over 50% of communication is achieved via non-verbal cues, such as facial expression, gesture and posture. That means most cold-callers, even the really good ones, are still limited by these phone related challenges. So be mindful, if you are choosing the telephone as your initial point of contact and introduction with a potential customer, you are already on the back foot, which means you need to work smarter.

My boss wants me to cold call, but I have call reluctance!

If you are going to cold-call - first make sure that you're 'buying-in' and not 'selling-in'!

Words are meaningless without emotion and emotions are very hard to experience over the phone. In fact, over 50% of communication is achieved via non-verbal cues, such as facial expression, gesture and posture. That means most cold-callers, even the really good ones, are still limited by these phone related challenges. So be mindful, if you are choosing the telephone as your initial point of contact and introduction with a potential customer, you are already on the back foot, which means you need to work smarter.

A sales tip: Don't cold-call unless you are 'buying-in' with your customers. That means; understanding when they pick up the phone they are expecting a buyer or at the very least someone that is going to add value to their business and their lives, not a seller - so don't disappoint them - buy-in first!

'Buying-in' is an empathetic approach to selling that enables you to cut-through to your customer's feelings and see the world through their eyes. This requires taking a genuine interest in them and their best interests. Moreover, how you can help them achieve their goals and aspirations in some way. Simply attacking a database with an open calendar and a positive attitude is not good enough. All the Glengarry leads are well and truly long gone!

Make sure your introduction and subsequent dialogue is all about helping the customer. You have to demonstrate you are 'interested' to be 'interesting'. If you are receiving this response: "Sorry, I'm not interested, goodbye!", what the customer is really saying is: "You have not demonstrated you are genuinely interested in me or my wellbeing enough for me to be interested in listening to what you have to say".

For many companies 'buying-in' is too hard. They just don't make the time, nor do they possess the desire to create and develop 'meaningful' conversations with customers - the dialogue is all about themselves and little else. Before you make your next call, ask yourself: Am I genuinely calling because I am interested in helping and contributing to someone in a positive way? Or am I simply calling to push my own agenda and make a sale to get paid?

If your response is motivated by the latter, I recommend speaking with your boss immediately and coming up with new and compelling conversation strategies that enable you to 'buy-in'. Also, I suggest that you (and other sales team members) would greatly benefit from regular sales training and coaching that develops you to engage and lead customers to a place where positive testimony and referrals are born. Then you will enjoy cold-calling more, and you won't need to call as much - your customers will call you.

Related Articles
  Sales Reluctance In Any Part of Selling
  'The Queen of Cold Calling' and Call Reluctance
  What approach should I take when cold calling?
  Sales Training – Salespeople Tips on Crossing the Barbed Wire Fence of Sales Reluctance
  It Ain\'t About You by Keith Rosen, MCC

Article Tags: cold callers, dialo, dialogue, emotion, emotions, empathetic approach, facial expression, feelings, genuine interest, gesture, goals and aspirations, initial point, meaningful conversations, non verbal cues, open calendar, point of contact, positive attitude, posture, sales tip, wellbeing



Related Forum Posts
I hate cold calling! - Hi Darryl, I hate cold calling. I always have and always will. What I found though was that the hardest part was picking up the phone and making the phone call. Once I had a prospect on the line there never seems to be any issue for me. Nowadays I tend to send a very brief email first asking for permission to contact them. I have never had someone take the time to email me to say 'no' and if they don't respond within a week chances are they have forgotten about the email anyway so I go ahead and call them.
Re: Cold Calling - In my experience the problem with hiring cold callers is that many of the successful candidates already realize that they have a talent for sales and are already working for themselves. Most of the candidates that would take a job cold calling most likely do not have solid selling or client service skills. I used to work for a brokerage firm in Victoria and we hired co-op students to cold call. In my opinion that was a mistake. Potential clients can sense inexperience very quickly and without a seasoned cold caller on your team prospecting will be very challenging.....the key is to find someone with skills that isn't already doing there own selling....tricky. Good luck Phil
Cold Calling - Hey Guys, I was wondering if anyone had any experience with hiring someone on straight commission cold calling. I am offering a co-worker 15% of my gross sales to cold call for one month (Line provided by myself) to set up meetings for me in Vancouver. I will be providing him with basic training, he seems pretty eager to try it out, but everyone usually is. Any tips or stories would be great! Thanks, Pete
Crafting a script - Hi Andrew This is actually a pretty big topic. And it's so unfair to dump it on you because I've seen even experts mess up a telephone strategy. The trick is to develop a reason for calling that really is to the callee's benefit. If you can do that, and if you have a good backup document, you can often get an excellent appointment hit rate right from the first, ice-cold call. I don't generally recommend going for the appointment on the first call because here are the average stats for appointments on a call cycle of every 60-90 days: 1st call, less than 1% will agree to see you 2nd call, maybe 3-5% will see you 3rd call, maybe 7% will see you 4th call, maybe 60% or more will see you So if you go pushing for appointments too soon in the call cycle, you could well be turning them against you and ruining that beautiful 60% later on. Here's an example of a strategy that I did for a client - a recruitment agency, just recently. I discovered just by chatting to employers and hr managers (I asked them what their biggest staff challenge was) that they lived in fear of staff quitting on them. Staff retention was their biggest issue. So the spiel went "I'm calling because we've noticed that staff poaching is a bit of a problem in Perth right now, and that's not helping us either. That's why our MD is visiting local businesses to explain a simple strategy you can put in place to help stop poaching. He's going to be in Xville next Thursday afternoon, and again on Friday afternoon - which is best for you?" If they said they didn't want to have a meeting the spiel continued "Oh that's fine, of course I know you're busy. Would you like me to just email the report to you instead so you can read it when you've got time?" Most people said yes, they'd like the report. And of course the report contained a strong call to action (to have the MD visit). Lots of times even when they'd said no to the telemarketer, they called back to make the appointment after all. This is what I mean by a strategy, it's not just a call by itself. This particular strategy got an appointment rate of 3:7 calls. Pretty good for ice-cold. Three provisos with this: 1 The reason for your visit, and the content of the backup info, must be critically relevant to a crushing need your client has 2 You need to have a mature professional making these calls, not a teenybopper who sounds like they're just out of school 3 When you do go out to that appointment, make absolutely sure you deliver on what they're expecting -- if you turn it into "bait and switch" you'll lose them forever. Give them even more than they were hoping for. Hope that helps, and good luck. Best wishes Christine
Re: Who hates cold calling? - Here's how I have had success with cold calling: Adopt the right attitude.If you fear/hate cold calling, chances are you are feeling like an intruder. The person on the other end of the line isn't making us feel that way. We are. Why do we feel like an intruder? Could be a couple of reasons. One: we don't really believe in the value our product offers. Two: we aren't calling a somewhat qualified prospect. The person you are calling has problems. He/she WANTS solutions. EXAMPLE: I cold called someone yesterday. An ad agency. The web site offered a direct line to the agency principal. This was the conversation: "Hi, I'm a direct response copywriter who works with agencies who are swamped with writing projects. Do you ever hire outside writers?" [i:4b9wkh89]KEY: In one sentence he knows what I want. Before I called, I know that most agencies hire outside writers. It's a question of whether or not they need one now. [/i:4b9wkh89] His response? Yes. Now , here's where I need to resist the temptation to [u:4b9wkh89]tell[/u:4b9wkh89] him how great I am. I simply said, "I'd like to email you some evidence that shows how I can add value for your clients. Where can I email it to?" He gave me his email address and that was the end of the cold call. He didn't say , hmmmm, that would be nice...he simply, literally told me his email addresss. That's a sign he has a need. I sent him off some recent results I produced for a client. Yesterday he sent me an email asking to learn more about me. Who knows where it will go but it started with a cold call. So, why did this approach allow me to be heard and generate interest? I knew something about my potential prospect's needs. I let him know quickly what I was after. I didn't try to bend his ear with a 'Stop me when you hear something you like' story. Try this and see how if works for you. It's important to believe what you are offering can change the life of the person you're calling. Once you believe that, it's easy to understand that every time you make a call , you have a chance to make a difference for someone.


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