What Is WRONG with Cold Callers?

Last week I decided to tweet and re-tweet two new articles, to gauge response from people other than my email subscribers.

As predicted, there were a slew of responses from people who have some kind of bizarre emotional addiction to cold calling. They were the typical responses, such as:

"Cold calling works for me!"
"There's still a place for cold calling in B2B sales!"
"If cold calling doesn't work for you, you're doing it wrong!"
"I make a lot of sales by cold calling!"

Hmm... really? Personally, I think these people are crazy, or delusional, or, probably most likely, just too lazy to bother to learn anything better. They're content with what they're bringing in, and so good for them.

But for people with lofty goals like you and me, that simply isn't good enough!

In a business environment where it's been proven over and over again that 80% of decision makers simply will never take a cold call - yet alone buy from one - cold calling is dead. Or as a major firm that supports financial advisors announced in a report, "Cold calling has gone the way of the Betamax and the wooly mammoth."

Why is this important?

Well, aside from the obvious fact that cold calling is a waste of time, is the fact that 20% of those people will buy from cold calls. And therein lies the problem.

As long as those 20% are still buying from cold calls, salespeople will continue to delude themselves into thinking that "cold calling works!"

Seriously - the average success rate from cold calling is 1%, and among the very best of the best, it's 3%.

Three percent! But is this any surprise when only 1 in 5 decision makers will even respond to a cold call in the first place?

If that 20% of the market would just stop responding to cold calls, people would wake up to the fact that it's a zero-results game, and they'd finally give it up and do something more productive to generate leads.

But, I'm not complaining. As long as the majority of salespeople continue to cold call and keep on fighting each other over that 20% of the market, the rest of us are free to go out and close sales with the other 80%.

I mentioned earlier that the cold calling lovers have some kind of bizarre emotional addiction to cold calling. Because they do. There's zero logic behind a decision to make cold calls when they don't work anymore. And as long as salespeople get a sale here and there from cold calling, the addiction will go on, and they'll continue to be afraid to stop cold calling and begin doing something different and better to prospect for sales.

So that's why it's time for you to...

Break Your Cold Calling Addiction!

There's really no sense in continuing to cold call when even a university study concluded that 4 out of 5 people will never respond. That's pretty bad odds. And in terms of actual sales success, it's even worse than that.

But, there's good news: There's a way out of the cold calling addiction. Lots of ways out. And no, I'm not one of an endless parade of hucksters selling "get rich with social media" products, although knowing how to use LinkedIn properly could provide you with all the business you'll ever need and then some.

If you're still cold calling, get out of your comfort zone, start learning what really works in today's modern economy, and watch your sales numbers explode.

 

New York Times best-selling author Frank Rumbauskas is the author of the Never Cold Call Again® System and has won numerous accolades, such as Readers Choice for Business  Book of the Year from 800-CEO-READ, and has been named one of Fast Company’s top 30 most influential people online. To learn more, and to download a free 37-page PDF preview of his Never Cold Call Again lead-generation system, visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com/