The Winner's Sales Strategy Blog

The cold calling advocates contradict themselves

One of my readers sent me an email detailing a sales training course his company had required him to attend. Here are some excerpts:

"REMEMBER that when you need to sell, it doesn't mean the prospect needs to buy. It's not their #1 priority: If it was, they'd have it already, or be talking to you already." (My comments: If it's not their #1 priority, they're not a qualified prospect, and you're wasting your time by talking to them in the first place.)

"In most situations, you should contact every name on the list every 3-4 weeks." (My comments: Why? So you can infuriate people who've already said no? Why call the same people who aren't going to buy when you can call new, fresh leads?)

"The average salesperson using our system does 50 dials an hour." (My comments: Wow. Talk about quantity over quality. What do you do, say hello then hang up?)

"Theory: Voice mails annoy prospects." (My comments: And cold calling doesn't? How on earth can you claim that harrassing people by calling every 3 weeks isn't annoying but leaving a voice mail is?)

That just goes to show how the advocates of cold calling always manage to contradict themselves. None of their arguments make any sense. Remember, cold calling is dead in our new economy. The time has come to use your brain and start working smart. As Henry Ford said, "Thinking is the hardest thing there is. That's why so few people engage in it."

Selling vs. Prospecting

One of the main concepts I try to teach salespeople is the fact that selling and prospecting are two entirely different skillsets. The reason cold calling doesn't work for the vast majority of salespeople is the simple fact that good salespeople tend to be terrible prospectors, while great prospectors aren't particulary good at the more intricate stages of selling such as needs identification, solution development, profit justification, presenting, and closing. In fact, one of the best sales managers I ever had made the following statement after announcing his intent to hire appointment-setting telemarketers: "We choose only the best people to work here and spent a lot of money training you. With that in mind, there's no way I'm going to have you wasting your time doing the job of $6/hour telemarketers. You're too talented and experienced for that."

This conflict between prospecting and selling is the basis for my entire system of selling. Keep it in mind at all times, and remember, the most successful people and organizations are those who delegate important tasks to those who can do it better and more efficiently. You need to "delegate" your prospecting to a well-planned marketing campaign if you wish to have tremendous success in sales.

More lessons from The Apprentice

Before getting into the specific lesson I think this week's episode of "The Apprentice" taught us, it really struck me that every single task has revolved around selling, and what we need to understand is that all business is selling. Even tasks that involved significant amounts of other types of work, such as renovating apartments or selecting artists, came down to selling in the end.

This week the teams were faced with a rather mundane business that forced them to think outside the box and try to come up with ideas to make money beyond selling rides for a few bucks. Early on, Heidi made the statement that cold calling wouldn't work. I agree! The team that won came up with the idea of selling advertising space on the rickshaws. Instead of selling five-dollar rides here and there, they sold thousands of dollars in advertising. The losing team still had a good idea - instead of selling rides one at a time, they decided to sell prepaid ride cards. Both ideas were great simply because they employed leverage, i.e. they effectively multiplied the dollar amounts the teams could generate at any given time. However, the losing team lost because their prepaid card idea still involved cold call selling on the street, and in the end, cold calling never works. The winning team not only had a highly leveraged idea, but they also leveraged their pre-existing business relationships and made that money from their existing base rather than trying to cold call strangers.

This is absolutely brutal!

I found a rant posted by a real-life business owner about his opinion of cold calling salespeople. While I think he probably goes a little too far, the important thing to keep in mind is that his opinion is fairly common and is an increasingly common opinion on the subject of cold calling. Here's an excerpt:

"Sales cold calls --- calling on strangers and proposing that they buy something --- are in every case immoral.  They break the Golden Rule, every time.  More importantly, they are parasites on our willingness to read email, answer the telephone, or open our doors to strangers. The Golden Rule, often cited as "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is a moral precept adopted by all of the world's major religions.  It is fundamental to Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy. Every sales cold call breaks the Golden Rule, period.  A person who occupies someone else's time for the purpose of pitching a product is not treating their time and privacy with the same respect he would have for himself. The fact that a cold caller is obliged to daily break the Golden Rule underlines the fact that cold calling operations prey on human social conventions.  They take ordinary human decency into account by imposing on people to deliver pitches.  Their collective activity imposes costs on that decency...."

And on and on and on. Heavy stuff, but you need to know that a LOT of prospects feel this way about cold calling, so think twice about whether it's something you should really be doing.

This week's lesson from The Apprentice

This week, Mr. Trump's sidebar was about how you can never succeed trying to sell something you don't believe in. If you don't believe in it and love it yourself, you'll never sell it to anyone else. At the end of the show, the losing team wound up in the boardroom. Mr. Trump demanded to know why they took such a terrible beating - the worst one yet since the show started - and they explained that they took a risk by going with an artist who had been commanding the highest prices, but they didn't particularly like this artist's work. Mr. Trump went on to say it's no wonder they lost. It's impossible to succeed if you're trying to sell something you don't believe in!

If you're not succeeding in sales, think about how you feel about your product. If you don't love it and believe in it, you'll never make it. I spent a few years in a fantastic industry, but when things took a turn for the worse, I stuck around a little too long and my sales results went from stratospheric to terrible, simply because I didn't believe in what I was selling anymore. If you're hanging around in an industry that once was but isn't anymore, and you no longer believe in it, it's time for a change.

Where are all the good prospects?

I came across an article written by someone who has studied social dynamics in depth for several years. He was trying to explain how the people with the most standoffish, cold personas on the outside are actually the easiest to get close to once - or more specifically, if - you get past that cold shell. To get his point across, he used an analogy, and said the following: "Most salespeople have noticed that the people who have giant NO SOLICITING signs plastered all over their doors are usually the easiest people to sell once you manage to get in to see them."

Read that sentence again and think about the message, because it explains a LOT. He followed that with this statement: "The people who won't accept sales calls know they have low sales resistance and are easily sold. Likewise, the people with cold outside personas are easily seduced and that's why they put up that front." In other words, they're afraid of being sold, and that's why they won't take cold calls! The people who do take cold calls are not afraid because they know full well they aren't going to buy anything anyway.

One of the patterns that has clearly emerged is that prospects uncovered via cold calling are increasingly flaky, feign high interest at the onset, but never buy anything. In fact, they're notorious for saying, "Yes, that sounds great, we'll get back to you soon!" Then, of course, you never hear from them again and they never return another call. By contrast, those people with the No Soliciting signs who won't take cold calls really are easy to close once you're in front of them. This simple fact is all the more reason to avoid cold calling like the plague, and especially to get out of the habit of setting appointments just for the sake of setting them. You need to start qualifying prospects OUT instead of merely qualifying them. The people who respond favorably to cold calling are almost always the flakes and strokers who tell you what you want to hear but don't take action. Those prospects who don't tolerate cold calling, on the other hand, only meet with salespeople when they're good and ready to buy. The ONLY way to get in front of these prime prospects is to use intelligent self-marketing to get your message across to them without cold calling.

Who's watching The Apprentice?

I ask because Donald Trump said something in one of his sidebars during the last episode that is so important to think about: "In selling, you must never appear desperate. As soon as you look desperate, it's over."

Most of us have been trained and otherwise misled to believe that we're supposed to kiss up to prospects, rearrange our schedules for their convenience, supplicate, and otherwise view prospects as superiors. This is bad. This is looking desperate. As you've probably noticed, I think cold calling is the ultimate expression of desperation. However, it's really easy to look desperate even if you're getting your leads in a more intellingent way. When I first started my self-marketing system and stopped cold calling, I didn't realize at first that the entire dymanic had changed. When I cold called someone and got an appointment, they had the power in the sales relationship right from the start. However, when I stopped cold calling and got people to call me, I had the power right from the start. You have to set yourself up to be the one in control of the sale and in the position of power; otherwise, you run the risk of looking desperate, and as The Donald said, once you do that, it's over, and even though they won't use these words, your prospects will tell you, "you're fired."