Cold Calling: The Most Unpopular Sales Subject
A recent Wall Street Journal article, lead with, “The cold call won’t die.” Couldn’t help but wonder, why in the world anyone who sells for a living would want the cold call to die in the first place.
Do the math. Sellers of professional services look for 20-25 new clients a year. Then, ask yourself, what faster way is there to reach prospects them than by telephone? With the right mindset, words and delivery on the part of the seller, you will quickly begin to hear money making sounds like cha-ching.
90-seconds of phone time you have with prospects are pure gold.
We are not talking about the “burn and churn tactics” of call centers that count on more than 300% turnover of telemarketers each year. We are talking about sales professionals who cold call people they have not met yet to let prospects know about the value gleaned by those who take advantage of their products and services.
Here’s a radical action step for you.
For one week do a minimum of 5 calls a week or a maximum of 5 calls a day. If you are a seller who makes 100 calls a day now here this. The instruction to make five calls a day is not heresy, it is educational, and it most certainly your short cut to success.
How can that be? For your answer ask yourself, how human do you feel after non-stop dialing-for-dollars all morning? You have got to know if you feel wrung out, spent, and down on cold calling how do you think the people on the other end of the line feel listening to you?
Remember when broker’s used to call with hot stock tips and sell financial products for quick commissions?
Savvy financial services professionals do not and never did operate that way.
They work toward building relationships with clients for lifelong financial planning and service. They connect with the prospects as people with real needs that these professionals are in a unique position to serve.
Even great sellers become insecure if they think of themselves as telemarketers.
Burn and churn tactics have contributed to giving cold calling a bad name. Better to remember cold calls are not driven by a script and dials per hour, but by a moral obligation to find those very people who want/need what you have to offer and the skills to deliver that information in a way that is meaningful to your prospects.
If you want to leverage cold calls for great profit and benefit for all, you are better off making fewer calls and positioning yourself as the expert in your field that you are; who has important, valuable services to offer prospects.