Cold Calling’s Multiple Personalities

June 20th, 2009

Cold calling has been seen as a good thing up to the ’80s and then seen as a bad thing in the 21st century.

Today, nothing strikes more dread and fear in salespeople as cold calling.

Yet business owners and sales managers see cold calling as an essential function for new business development on a budget.

Obviously cold calling means different things at different times to different people.  So here’s a look at “cold calling’s” multiple personalities.

Cold Calling as Soul Destroyer

All salespeople will recognize this personality of cold calling. When doing the same thing over and over again, and not getting the desired results….well, it takes a part of you away.

And then some cold calling is worse than others, by far. The lowliest of the low are boiler rooms. Here’s a personal story. As a very young man between jobs (aka out of work) I answered an ad for telesales.

It was a boiler room. The job was to call up companies at random from yellow pages and get the lowly clerk who ordered printer cartridges on the line, and then work him or her over. The boiler room script had us imply we were their source of printer cartridges, and to get a re-order over the phone.

Well, of course we weren’t that company’s normal source. It was a spoof. But the numbers were such that occassionally some tired, disheartened, lowly clerk would actually place an order. And the boiler room did deliver printer cartridges as promised. But the sales was all based on a lie. On trickery. It was just plain sleazy.

I quit half-way through the first day. Didn’t get a commission. Didn’t even stop to pick up the minimum hourly wage. It was soul destroying.

Recent books, including “Never Cold Call Again” (it’s worth reading, but note: it requires cold calling in the beginning, funny huh?), use this cold calling personality to sell copies.

Obviously, if you’re cold calling without integrity, like in a boiler room, your soul withers up and dies. Not all cold calling is like that. But cold calling can have a dragging, depressing effect on the salesperson’s psyche. The numbers are painful, and that can wear you out.

Cold Calling for Opt-In, Permission Marketing

Some times in sales you want to get prospects’ permission to be able to reach out to them via email over a long time period.  Cold calling can be employed to help you get their permission.

Obviously this is different from direct mail where junk mail ends up in prospects’ post box. Who cares if prospects really wanted that post card or brochure?

Opt-In, Permission Marketing means prospects are allowing you to send them something of interest/value via email. If you’re buying a bunch of email addresses of unknown prospects and emailing them, well…you’re spamming.  And that can eventually bounce you out of your Internet Service Provider (ISP). So, you’ll always want to have use Opt-In, Permission-based prospect lists.

The interesting thing about getting Opt-In Permission is that you need to reach prospects for the first time in order to get them to opt-in. And there lies the rub.

There are other ways than cold calling to gain Opt-Ins. For example, you can place banner ads, Pay Per Click (PPC) and pay other people to promote your request to add prospects to your Opt-In list. But those all cost money. And cold calling  doesn’t cost anymore money than is already sunk into a sales person.

So cold calling in this case can be a legitimate and cost-effective way to gain Op-Ins.

Of course you have to have an incentive for prospects to sign up with you, but that’s for another time and blog post.

Cold Calling for “Right-Place, Right-Time” Opportunities

This personality is the reason cold calling still exists. If you call enough prospects, and are at least mediocre in sales talent, at some point you’re going to run into someone who really needs what your selling.

And if you’re selling a high-ticket item, that one sale is going to outweigh all the pain and suffering you’ve gone through to get it.

This is why owners and sales managers still believe in cold calling. That cry of “it’s a numbers game” has echoed through sales meetings since the beginning of time.

Cold Calling is a functioning disfunctional

All the above personalities are true for cold calling. And all at the same time. So when you decide to cold call, the “how your calling” and “what you’re trying to accomplish” impacts not only your results, but also how the salespeople feel about it. And that matters. Because who wants to slam their fingers in the drawer over and over again? It’s just something that won’t get done.

What other personalities do you have for cold calling?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Arlen
President
Revenue-IQ

Image by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten 
CC BY SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Entry Filed under: Selling