CEO's and Sales Managers: When Sales Recruiting, Understand the Ability to Make Cold Calls
Last week I saw ads from 2 different people pop up on Facebook. Both ads had the call out, "Cold Calling is Dead," followed by the advertisement for some digital marketing services. I ignored the first ad. When I saw the second ad, I engaged with a simple message, "Cold Calling is Not Dead". The advertiser's comment was "Neither is the horse and buggy whip." I did not engage with this person. I didn't need to. People who I didn't even know engaged with responses. They weren't very professional responses, but they made their point that cold calling isn't dead. I love salespeople!
There are 3 lessons I want to call out from this event.
Be careful about making unqualified statements for advertising, even if you offer a valuable service like lead generation. If you come across as misinformed in your ad, you certainly lose credibility with sales consulting service providers like me, my new acquaintances on Facebook and anybody who read the comments. None of us will select this company to help increase sales for our business.
"The Fear of Loss is Greater Than the Desire For Gain" is one of my favorite quotes. I learned this quote on my first day of sales training in my first real sales job a couple years after college. I'm not sure he invented the quote, but I heard it from a gentleman named Jason Chudnofsky. Jason used this quote when he was training on cold calling. He was explaining how fear of making cold calls can hold a person back from being successful in sales. Later, Jason became president of that company, The Interface Group, originator of the once famous Comdex Computer Trade Show. The quote is self explanatory, but I'll explain it anyway. People lose out on opportunity for gain, because they are afraid of failing. There are many quotes about the benefits of failing to become successful. In fact, the majority owner of the Interface Group is now worth about $34 billion. His name is Sheldon Adelson. He told me and several of his employees back then that he had been bankrupt twice before. He failed twice before becoming rich. Now he is one of the world's wealthiest people.
Cold Calling is Not Dead! There are a lot of wealthy sales people who are crucial to helping their company grow its business each year as they make lots of money for themselves. They pick up the phone and make call after call after call until they connect to a decision maker. Or, they make visit after visit to businesses until they make a connection. When they make that connection, they move on to the next call until they make a sale, set up a meeting, or achieve some other objective. Then they do the same thing over and over again.
I recently helped a client set up a business to business selling effort
I participated in the recruiting process. I met two people who are extremely enthusiastic about cold calling. Both were hired. Both were effective cold callers. One loves picking up the phone until he makes a connection, and the other prefers to walk into businesses cold until she makes a connection. Both will do well to help my client grow the company's sales.
Cold Calling Empowers a Salesperson to Target Specific Prospective Customers
Cold calling is an extremely effective method to gain a sale with the company or individual that you target. If you have a top list of 100 people, who you identified as the most important potential customers, cold calling is an effective method to penetrate your target list. Digital marketing, email marketing and other impersonal contact methods will not gain the same penetration rate necessary to gain a sale with a small targeted group.
CEO's: Make sure your company selectively hires the right salespeople. You can grow your business by hiring people who will succeed in your company, while saving money on recruiting, onboarding, training, and lost income. OMG offers the number 1 ranked tool for selecting top salespeople at a 92% success rate.
Sales Managers: Ditto
HR Sales Recruiters: Ditto again
Salespeople: Try to get the courage to cold call. Make yourself try. Don't give up too easily. Use a script for the introduction. Make sure you have at least some sales training or you've read some books. If you can't or won't cold call, find a sales job that doesn't require cold calling or find a different profession.
Cold callers: Crank it up and Make lots of money. Keep plugging.
Anyone who needs help finding a good book on cold calling or scripting, feel free to email me and ask for a recommendation. Make sure you describe your job and industry. Read this blog article, written by Dave Kulan of OMG. It explains the weakness that salespeople have reaching decision makers.
CEO's, Sales Management Executives and HR Professionals: If you want some suggestions on how to hire salespeople, who will succeed, or how to make your current sales force more successful, please contact me, read a few more blog articles, or check out some articles below.
Thanks for reading. Chris