What If We Could Make Cold Calling More Pleasant Than A Root Canal?

In his book, Selling When No One is Buying, Stephan Schiffman, suggests setting aside some time every day to make cold calls.

Gee, that sounds like a swell time, doesn’t it?

He continues to make it even more fun (?) by adding that you should track your success rate and calculate your ratio!

Yeeeeha!!!

Then he says to check it often to determine where you stand and what you need to tweak for greater success.

Woo-hoo. More good times!! My heart can’t take it…. I mean, really, I can only think of, oh, maybe SIX MILLION other things I’d rather do than cold call.

Ok, let’s be honest – cold calling really isn’t that much fun. But it is necessary.

Schiffman, a corporate sales trainer, repeats the oft-used “knowledge is power!” And while I tend to agree, I have another suggestion that may warm up some of the cold calling every salesperson must do.

This inspiration started to form while I was reading The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill.

He tells the story of a young, green salesperson who was targeted to be the butt of a practical joke. An experienced sales “star” sent him off to try to sell some securities to an artist who had rebuffed experienced “star” several times over.

Basically, he wanted to throw the kid to the lions.

The young man went to the artist’s home and began talking with him about his paintings. Even after the artist asked his name and his business, the young man did not try to sell the securities. Instead, he said, “Oh, never mind my business or my name; I am more interested in you and your art!”

After a while, the artist insisted and the end result was a nice sale!

The lesson here is to listen and be more interested, rather than trying to be interesting.

Everyone likes to talk about themselves and their world. Make it a habit to listen and talk about the person’s interests instead of yourself. You have to understand that shallow talk and cheap flattery won’t cut the mustard.

You have to be

sincere and genuine.

And that will make you more attractive and personable!

And that translates to more successful!

Plus – and here’s the kicker – it’s MORE FUN.

Imagine that? Cold calling made more fun.

But that’s not the end of the inspiration of how to warm up your cold calling. Keep reading.

In Schiffman’s book he later says, “Smart selling might be a cold call to check on the status of a project.”

Now after reading Hill’s story, Schiffman’s comment made me think that if you listened carefully to people and were interested in their stories and lives, you would have a whole bunch of information about what things they do and are involved in.

Which means it gives you a reason to give them a call to see what progress they’ve made on a pet project, or how they liked the event they talked about attending, or whether their child has heard about that college acceptance yet.

In other words, the cold calling starts off on a warm note, a personal note. It says, “I care about YOU.”

And, we all know that people do business with people they like and who are interested in them.

So, as you are out and about and meet new prospective clients, ask questions about their lives, find out what makes them tick and what they’re interested in. Make a note on the back of their business card and start a stack of “cold call contacts” on your desk.

Who knows, you may even start to look forward to your cold calling time each day!

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“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.”

-Bernard M. Baruch

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