“If you put enough monkeys at typewriters,” one of my consulting clients said in a seminar with me, “Sooner or later, one of them will come up with WAR & PEACE.”
He was predicting that with so many people going into telephone selling, telemarketing, lead generation, appointment setting, tele-sales, telephone solicitation, inside sales, or whatever you want to label it; at least one of them would give me a run for my money and would become a formidable competitor.
Most writers toss the phrase “cold call” around without ever defining what it means.
I think it is worth our time to consider exactly what makes a cold call a COLD call.
After all, terms are important; just ask two people if they “like” each other or are “in love” with each other.
So, what is a COLD call?
First, does it involve selling? There’s some disagreement, here.
If you look at ads for phone folks many of them will state:
“Appointment setter wanted—No selling required!”
Make cold calls without it taking a toll on your soul
Old-school traditional cold calling can take a toll on a person’s self esteem over time. It’s just not natural to have somebody hang up on us, or to experience rejection over and over each day.
Because of this, many of us tend to recoil at even the idea of cold calling. It’s a fear-laden experience that’s often depressing.
You see, most of us have a mental block around cold calling. We associate cold calling with the worst of what selling is about — the “going to war” concept where we put on armor and play a mind game with someone we’ve never met.
All this can be avoided by simply shifting your frame of reference. Once you do this, you’ll actually look forward to the adventure of cold calling. You’ll overcome those moments when you find yourself sitting at the telephone physically unable to make a cold call because “burn out” has robbed you of the energy.
We all hate spam in our email boxes. It’s annoying, impersonal, and sometimes offensive. In spite of this, it may surprise you to know that emails can be a very good way to open communication with a prospect.
If you carefully follow the new cold calling mindset within your email, you’ll discover once again that your prospects (readers) will respond much more favorably.
So let’s review some important things to remember about making cold calls the new way, then we’ll look at applying this new mindset within your emails.
What happens when you’re talking with a prospect during a cold call and you start to realize there isn’t an honest “fit” for your product or service? Your prospect doesn’t have a problem, hassle, or challenge that your product or service solves.
Well, the old cold calling mindset is “Chase everybody possible and focus on the sale and never take no for an answer!”
So how does this new cold calling mindset work? Well, if you keep trying to push people into something they don’t want, you increase the chances of them rejecting you.
Overcoming Old Sales Conditioning
The moment you use the old-school cold calling approach — the traditional pitch about who you are and what you have to offer — you trigger the negative “salesperson” stereotype. And that means instant defense or rejection. I call it “The Wall.”
The problem is with how you’re selling, not what you’re selling. When we start cold calling by talking about what we have to offer, we’re “pitching” ourselves instead of focusing on the other person. Our voice and demeanor is full of expectation. And this creates sales pressure — which triggers resistance.