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Why is Cold Calling Like Buying New Shoes?

Guest post by: Wendy Weiss

Article Overview: On an introductory call, that first call with a prospect, you are not asking that prospect to buy from you-you are asking the prospect to have a conversation with you

Why is Cold Calling Like Buying New Shoes?

You're walking down a street in your home town and you have some time on your hands so you're window shopping. You suddenly stop-transfixed by the fabulous shoes in the store window. Being a great fan of fabulous shoes you feel drawn to go into the store.

At the store entrance your path is blocked by a sales clerk who demands: "Are you going to buy shoes from us today?"

If you are like most you'll respond, "Huh?" Possibly you'll say, "Well I don't know yet." If the store clerk then persists in asking, "Are you going to buy shoes from us today?" what is the likelihood that you will continue on into the store to buy shoes? Slim to none.

Unfortunately, this is the type of scenario that many prospectors set up for themselves when cold calling. On an introductory call, that first call with a prospect, you are not asking that prospect to buy from you-you are asking the prospect to have a conversation with you. Yes, ideally you want your prospect to buy, however, that comes later.

Here's an example from a script I was sent recently to review:

"Hello (Prospect's Name). I'm calling to find out if you are happy with your current vendor."

Few prospects, unless they are absolutely miserable, will answer "No, I'm not happy," to that question. When faced with this type of question, even prospects who are unhappy with their vendor will tell you they are perfectly content. This "are you happy?" question is exactly like asking a prospect "are you going to buy from us today?" at the entrance to the store. It backfires and gets you the answer that you don't want.

Here's another example from a financial advisor who did his entire sale process over the telephone. I asked this financial advisor what his goal was for his very first phone call with a prospect. His response? "I want them to let me review their 401K." That is not a realistic goal for a first phone call. It's kind of like the "Are you going to buy shoes from us today?" question. It's too far into the process for the first conversation.

The advice I gave the financial advisor was to chunk down his goals and make them manageable. For example: His first goal might be to get the prospect's agreement to have a conversation. The next goal might be to get answers to some specific questions. And so on. This financial advisor needed to lay out his sales process. Later in the process he could ask to review the 401K and then he would probably be able to get that agreement.

If however, this financial advisor persisted in seeing his goal as reviewing the prospect's 401K it would be exactly like the shoe clerk asking, "Are you going to buy shoes from us today?" It's too early in the process; it creates pressure which, in turn, causes pushback. Prospects flee, much as you would if accosted by a sales clerk at the entrance of a shoe store demanding to know whether or not you are planning to buy.

So look at your process. Determine a set of small and manageable goals for each conversation. This will help you lead your prospect, step by step, through your sales process to arrive at the other end with the sale.

© 2009, Wendy Weiss

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Article Tags: cold calling, cold calling articles, cold calling tips, sales



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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
Getting links from the giants - Hi Kevin - it's simple - what do you have to offer them? What kind of compelling reason can you give them to link to you? According to my Google Webmaster Central Tools I have a total of 15,937 links to my site. 4,523 of them go to my homepage while the remaining 11,414 go to various pages on my site. My last sitemap indicated that I have 34,789 pages of content on my website so, excluding the homepage, I have about one link for every three pages of content. I think it’s important to also note that I don’t do any link buying and never tell people what anchor text to use when they link to me. I always suggest that they use whatever text they feel best describes the page they are linking to on my site (if everyone links to you with the same anchor text you can get penalized from Google). Having great content is one way to build links but usually you also need to take an active approach to marketing yourself. Can you build a section on your shoe site along the lines of "The Tennis Player's Ultimate Guide To Buying Shoes" where you talk about all the different considerations someone needs to make before buying shoes - and then at the end recommend Nike? In return Nike links to the site because it's a 3rd party endorsement of their products. Many big companies have News sections on their sites and always love showing off good news - you just need to find a way to give them something worth showing off!
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


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