"Does Your Sales Manager HATE You?"
In seeking to grow my professional marketing consulting business, I ordered a book recently about how to hire top-notch salespeople, and was excited to learn what it had to say.
And then a shocker came.
One of the early chapters of the book just floored me. The gist of it was this: "Cold calling is dead but that's not your problem. Let the sales reps deal with it, and even if they don't sell enough to make their own numbers, you'll still pad your wallet through their efforts."
"The book for sales managers said: 'Cold calling is dead but that's not your problem. Let the sales reps deal with it, and even if they don't sell enough to make their own numbers, you'll still pad your wallet through their efforts.'"
The book when on to promote the "churn & burn" mentality that FAR too many companies have. The idea is to hire sales reps, send them out cold calling, and even though they'll either quit or get fired within 90 days, they'll still add enough new customers to provide long-term revenue for the company.
THIS IS SICK AND TWISTED!
And it's no way to treat qualified salespeople.
Sadly though, it didn't surprise me at all. I've had the experience of working for companies that did just that: They "churned and burned" salespeople, with a good percentage of them turning over every few months, because the requirement to make 50 or 100 cold calls every day simply didn't work, and they failed and moved on to new jobs.
"They "churned and burned" salespeople, with a good percentage of them turning over every few months, because the requirement to make 50 or 100 cold calls every day simply didn't work, and they failed and moved on to new jobs."
Of course, the company doesn't care, because each of those reps will have added just enough new customers for the company to receive revenue from long-term, upsell to other products, and so on.
This idea is very common in the life insurance business. Most companies still instruct new agents to make a list of 100 friends and relatives, and then try to sell life insurance to all of them.
Why?
Because life insurance is a tough business, and they know full well that most of the new agents will either quit or get fired within a few months. But, it doesn't matter much to the company, because they'll sell enough policies out of that list of 100 to make a LOT of money for the company, for a LONG time.
Even so, this concept of "churning & burning" sales reps is still wrong, it takes advantage of people for the company's benefit, and it does nothing to build a long-term successful sales force.
Is YOUR Sales Manager Reading These Books?
The scary part isn't so much that books like this exist. What's scarier is the odds are good that YOUR manager has read them as well, in a quest to learn how to hire good salespeople.
If you're having cold calling shoved down your throat on a daily basis, there is one of two things you can do - or do them both - to avoid the problem and get away from the "dictator" sort of manager:
1. Go find a new job, with a company and a manager who use their brains and realize that forcing sales reps to make cold calls is actually harmful to the company in the long run.
2. Begin selling so much without cold calling that they won't care how you're selling, as long as you keep on bringing in big sales numbers.
Step 1 can be tough, especially in today's tight job market, combined with the fact that most managers are still cold calling obsessed.
Step 2 is a different story. It's something you CAN accomplish on your own, regardless of how your company operates, even if you have to do it "stealthily" while tricking them into believing that you're getting all those sales from cold calling!
If you're not up to speed on modern, Information Age lead-generation methods, learn how you can stop cold calling forever and become a sales rock star by downloading a 37-page PDF preview of the Never Cold Call Again System here.
New York Times best-selling author Frank Rumbauskas helps companies make billions by improving sales processes and marketing strategy. He 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 30 Most Influential People. If you're in sales and want to stop cold calling forever, download a free 37-page PDF preview of his Never Cold Call Again lead-generation system at NeverColdCall.com