No More Cold Calling Sample Chapter


No More Cold Calling bookGet Ready For A Great Adventure!

“I’ve been hearing wonderful things about you.” Don’t you love hearing that? Now picture a sales world where you will only be meeting clients who want to meet with you—a world where you’ll never have to cold call again, send prospecting letters, or entice clients with special offers. Enter the world of referral selling.

In this new world you’ll spend your time wisely, you’ll be working less and getting more, you’ll have fabulous clients, more revenue, and more profits. You’ll be transforming the way you work and experiencing a different way of life as a professional salesperson. Once you experience the kind of success referral selling brings, there’s no turning back.

If you have all the clients you want, and they are all profitable clients, then you don’t need to read this book. If 100 percent of your business is referral business and you have more clients than you can handle, you don’t need to read this book. But if you don’t fit into either of these scenarios, then be ready to read this book and to do some hard but deeply satisfying work.

Our Focus

There are really just two parts to sales: Part One is getting in front of the right people, and Part Two is everything that happens after that.

The focus of most sales efforts is on Part Two—conducting a sales call, asking probing questions, proposing, presenting, and closing. How much time and energy do you typically spend thinking about Part One—getting in front of the right people? Very little. Think about it. If you don’t get in front of the right people nothing else really matters, does it? You might be thinking of that dreaded term, “prospecting,” when you think about getting in front of the right people— and you envision yourself cold calling on the phone, following up on dead leads, or calling door-to-door. It doesn’t have to be like that.

What You’ll Need

Referral selling is logical and simple, but it’s not easy. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it. You’ll need to start using several new skills as you make the transition to referral selling. The rewards, fortunately, are almost instantaneous: better customers, better sales, and a less stressful work-life.

Dedication

You will need the courage and guts to transform the way you sell, and you will need to dedicate time to learn, practice, and implement a Referral Selling System. It is a rigorous discipline that will give you a monumental return on your investment.

The Personal Touch

You’ll need to get connected and stay connected. We’re all linked to technology more than ever before. Many of us spend more time talking on our cell phones, checking email, or showing off the bells and whistles of our latest gadget, than we do actually connecting with people, especially new people.

Selling is personal—very, very personal. We need to be present, involved, and connected. We need to connect—one human being to the other. It’s then that we can make the person-to-person sale. Technology is a support for our sales process, not a substitute.

An Open Mind

You’re about to begin an exciting adventure. My passion is to transform the way you work. Change isn’t easy. You need to be open to throwing traditional sales models out the door, to challenging practices that aren’t working, and to enrolling others in the Referral Selling System.

One of my first lessons about working differently in the business world was at Joseph Magnin—a women’s specialty store in San Francisco. It was my first job out of college, and I entered their Management Training Program. I wanted to rearrange a display of elegant gifts, and I asked some of the older employees what they thought of the idea. They all told me that it had never been done before. I went to my manager and told her what I wanted to do. When I mentioned the fact that everyone told me it had never been done before, she looked at me and said: “That’s the best reason I know for doing it.”  I was 22 years old, and I have never forgotten what Carolyn told me. She probably had no clue what an impression she made on me.

Since that time, I continue to challenge traditional ways of working. I challenge tired prospecting techniques like cold calling, mail campaigns, advertising, and trade shows—and the expectation that these activities will bring us great clients.

There’s an old story about a little girl who watched her mother cut off the ends of a ham before she put it in the roasting pan. One day the little girl asked her mother why she cut off the ends of the ham. The mother thought for a moment, and said: “I don’t know, my mother always did it that way. Why don’t you ask your grandmother?” So the little girl asked her grandmother why she cut off the ends of the ham before she put it in the pan. The grandmother said “That’s simple. The pan wasn’t big enough.”

I invite you to challenge why you are selling the way you are selling. If what you are doing is giving you the life you want, keep doing it. Otherwise, have an open mind, enjoy your reading, and catch the Referral Spirit!

Visit your local bookstore, or buy Joanne’s book now at Amazon.com. Or return to the book page.