STOP Cold Calling!
Why is it when the economy tanks, article after article, webinar after webinar, sales strategy after sales strategy promote cold calling as the tried and true prospecting method? STOP cold calling. It’s a total waste of time. Your time. The prospect’s time. And wasting time is stupid. So stop, already.
Welcome to my blog. I will tell the truth and give you my points of view. I will speak out as I haven’t before. This is a forum for ideas, conversation, and dissent (you don’t have to agree with me). I will share with you what I know works in sales. If something that isn’t my area of expertise comes up, I will refer you to the expert.
Repeat After Me: I Will Not Cold Call
I want to scream every time I read one of these cold-calling articles – the authors talk about capturing a prospect’s attention in 10 seconds, crafting a message to reach the decision-maker, navigate through screeners, overcome sales resistance, create voicemail messages that get returned, and have a sales pipeline that can’t be beat. Garbage.
STOP
Cold calling is a tactic, duplicitous, not genuine, and it doesn’t work. Cold calling is a total waste of every salesperson’s time. And cold calling authors have the gall to call cold calling an “art.”
STOP
Consider the following situations:
- You call someone because you got their name came from a colleague or friend. Cold!
- You call someone and then follow up with a letter. Cold!
- The person’s name came from a specific list. Still cold!
These are all cold calls – the person doesn’t know you and is not expecting your call. Even though you think you’ve been able to avoid sounding like a telemarketer, this type of call is still cold. And cold calling is a numbers game. If you make 100 calls, you’ll talk to about 20 people, schedule 10 sales appointments, and if you’re lucky, close one new deal. That’s a 1 percent return on your time.
Whether it’s direct mail, calling on the phone, knocking on doors to make an in-person sales call, or sending unsolicited email, why would you bother with a sales system that gets such dismal results?
STOP Cold Calling
Not only does cold calling have a low percentage return, those who cold call and those who receive cold calls rarely have a positive attitude about cold calls. Research by Huthwaite® surveyed both sellers and buyers about their attitudes on prospecting:
Sellers
• 63 % of salespeople say cold calling is what they most dislike about their jobs
• 88 % of salespeople work for companies that consider prospecting important
Buyers
• 91% of buyers never respond to an unsolicited inquiry
• 71% of buyers find cold calls annoying
• 88% of buyers will have nothing to do with cold callers
• 94% of buyers couldn’t remember a single prospector or message they had received during the last two years
Some authors even suggest that if you cold call the “right way,” you will actually enjoy the process.
STOP
Others say that cold calling is a necessary part of every salesperson’s prospecting strategy, and we all should be doing it. Some salespeople say they are new to a job and don’t have clients or are just out of school and don’t know enough people. Excuses, excuses…
STOP
Want to succeed in sales? Stop cold calling and adopt the only sales strategy where you are pre-sold, have trust and credibility, ace out the competition, shorten your sales process, incur no sales costs, and get a new client more than 70 percent of the time.
It’s called Referral Sales. Why would you work any other way?
Hello Joanne,
I completely agree with you. Cold calling yields dismal results. As an alternative, people with limited funds buy from those they know/trust best. Why not make a list of the 10 colleagues/friends/family you know/trust best, then call them up and ask them about possible projects/needs for your project or people they might know that need your services. Better, yet, ask them FIRST how you can help them increase their number of clients/customers. For example, a friend of mine who has a “women owned body shop” (great work) asked me to simply bring her cards, pass them out at a breakfast meeting I attend and ask that the cards remain in each person’s car or wallet. I did so and this generated a few new customers for my friend….people never know when they might be in a car accident and need her services.
Are there any trigger events for your product or services? If so, do you know them and do the RIGHT people know about your product or services….this is a great question to think about.
Have a great day!
Dr.Mary Jean Koontz
San Francisco, CA
so how do you start with NOT doing cold calls?
you still have not given us ways to start the referrall processes.
Agreed. This article makes no sense. You have to meet people when you open a business and it is the fastest way to meet a mass amount of people.
Cesar:
Start by making a list of everyone you know. Organize your list by the people you know the best at the top.
My Article: There’s No Such Thing as a Warm Call gives more tips http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/articles/No_Such_Thing.pdf
How are new leads acquired without utilizing some form of cold call technique? Hell, you said it yourself that any new customer that calls in is considered a cold call! So how am I supposed to get new business by sitting on my ass and taking orders from already existent customers. I’m not buying what you’re selling at all. I have activated 7 new customers in the past two weeks via cold calling during my free time. I suppose I should have just sat here and daydreamed instead of making money. idiot.
Hilarious!
Make a list and ask for referrals, that is your grand advice? What if you are a new rep in a new territory? Then just wait until someone knocks on your door?
The reason why there are so many bad salespeople is because they believe there is a magic bullet, keep selling those magic beans, the rest of us will actually work for a living…
Well, I can certainly appreciate your thoughts, but if all you need to do is speak to someone to schedule an appointment, or qualify them as someone you DO NOT want to work with….I have to agree with Trey, referrals are great, but whenever a Financial Services person calls and says they were referred to me by Joe Blow I wonder why Joe gave them my name, and I ASK Joe why he gave my name out?
To Brad:
I just posted to Geoffrey James’ BNET Sales Machine http://blogs.bnet.com/salesmachine/?p=4365#comments.
The way Geoffrey defines cold calling is not the way I define it. I never said that any new customer who calls in is a cold call. That is Geoffrey’s definition.
I define cold calling as calling someone who does not know you and is not expecting your call. It’s an outbound sales calling effort where salespeople or telemarketers are calling from a purchased list or names they’ve been given.
If someone calls you through a referral, that’s not cold. It’s really HOT! If they took the initiative to pick up the phone or send an email because someone suggested they talk to you, they’re really interested, and most likely, qualified. (You’ll need to decide on that.) As salespeople, we love this kind of sales call. Keep ‘em coming!
To Trey:
Even if you are a new rep in a new territory, people will refer you because of you. People refer those they know, like and trust.
Making a list and doing nothing accomplishes nothing. Referral selling is a proactive, disciplined process, with specific goals, skills, and metrics. Like anything else, when you work it, it works. If you wait until someone knocks on your door, you won’t have a job for long.
To Randolph:
I wonder why Joe Blow gave your name as well. The referral process works when Joe Blow contacts you, recommends the Financial Advisor (and gives list of reasons) and obtains your agreement to speak with him.
Otherwise, the Financial Advisor is making a cold call. (No introduction) No wonder you had the reaction you did. Show Joe Blow how to make an introduced referral!Tips here
http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/articles/No_Such_Thing.pdf
Joanne,
I sell technology B2B. I appreciate your suggestions. It would be great not to have to cold call. What I do to offset the cold call stigma is research and planning. When I call, it is informed and relevant to them.
I secured the largest initial customer in my companies history by cold calling the Chief Revenue Officer repeatedly. After he finally connected me to the right people on his team, the sales process was underway. As it turns out, my solution has transformed their business and it all started from a cold call. The CRO thanked me for my sales effort.
I call on some of the largest brands in the world. It’s hard to penetrate their armor, but when you do there’s so much to be gained for both parties if there’s a fit. I choose who I want to go after and that gives me a certain level of control. If you work from referrals or leads alone, someone else is choosing your customers for you and there’s no guarantees that a sale will result.
My approach is simply this:
Care enough to research
Care enough to call
Care enough to have a genuine interest in providing value and/or solution
When my prospects get the idea that I care, they care. It’s a relationship. It may start cold, but there’s always a chance it will heat up. In the example I gave earlier, my client would still be struggling with the same problem had it not been for my persistence.
If your attitude is aimed at finding those who need you, cold calling is much more acceptable.
Hi Jeff:
Some salespeople tell me they are successful cold calling. If that works for you, then continue. While your cold calling paid off (“transforming” your client’s business), the question stands in how much TIME it took to ultimately close the deal.
People who use referrals as their Business Development/Pipeline development method close more business in less time. Consider how much more business you might have closed during the time you spent trying to reach the CRO if you were actively working your referral network.
I disagree with this statement you made “If you work from referrals or leads alone, someone else is choosing your customers for you and there’s no guarantees that a sale will result.”
Actually, when you sell through referrals, you ask for the introduction to exactly the person you want to meet. You absolutely choose your customers. And, when you receive a referral introduction, that person wants to talk to you. You shorten your sales process, ace-out the competition, reduce your cost of sales, and convert that prospect to a client more than 50 percent of the time.
It sounds as if you enjoy the thrill of the chase. Most salespeople do, and so do I, but what I love the most is talking to sales prospects when I’ve been introduced. You really don’t have to cold call.
Hi Joanne,
I appear to be in the minority here regarding my opinion of Cold Calling versus Referral Sales and that’s fine.
I am of the opinion as the old saying goes, “Whatever Floats Your Boat.” If you find cold calling works for you, then by all means stick with it.
I too know of sales people who are in favor of cold calling as it has produced results for them. Some of these same folks however are admittedly afraid of trying something different as they fear risking losing precious time with a new methodology and being “called out” by sales management if the cold calling sales metrics have fallen off the table.
In many cases, sales managers will demand cold calling as part of the required prospecting repertoire thus giving the sales person little choice of abandoning it for some other prospecting methodology.
But for me, being in sales, sales management, business development and channel management for nearly 35 years, “referral sales” is clearly the way to go…I say again…for me. There is no doubt that your comments below, are absolutely correct, and I quote you below:
“Actually, when you sell through referrals, you ask for the introduction to exactly the person you want to meet. You absolutely choose your customers. And, when you receive a referral introduction, that person wants to talk to you. You shorten your sales process, ace-out the competition, reduce your cost of sales, and convert that prospect to a client more than 50 percent of the time.”
The shortening of the sales process is one of the key advantages of referral sales. Once you begin your referral sales pipeline, it grows dramatically. It can start with personal contacts, (friends), prior clients and even prior employers when you had worked for those companies.
Engendering trust and integrity is key in the establishing of lucrative business relationships and referral sales provides one with a “fast track” through this process.
Lastly, the recession, joblessness, downsizing and abysmal economy has created a business environment making cold calling more challenging. Employees are often now performing the work of 3 or more people thus the reason why when calling and getting voice mail, you rarely get a call back.
In a complex IT environment it is very challenging to leave a voice mail message which conveys a compelling value proposition and a sense of urgency within the few allotted seconds or minute of leaving a message. Any message longer than 30 seconds and you risk being summarily dismissed via a “click.”
But when you have the benefit of a Referral Sale, you are far more likely to be engaged in a dialogue. I know this for a fact as I had employed both cold calling and referral sales techniques and for me, there is no contest…referral sales yields the best results…
Hi Joanne…
Great article….
would love to read the article that you mentioned a couple of times:
http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/articles/No_Such_Thing.pdf
…..but the link did not work
Thanks for sharing
Bobby Wallace
http://www.charlestonbesthomeloan.com
P.S. 90% of my production each month comes
from referrals!
I seem to have inadvertently got on a list somewhere that is being ciruclated as for the past month I have been receeiving about 10 cold calls a week from financial advisers in the UK. Does anyone know how I can get my name and number removed from whatever data base it may be sitting on? the calls a positively frustrating.
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Hey there,
I just started working in a packaging company as business development and I’m totally new to the industry and the place (where I work). How should do you reckon I kick start my networking without knowing anyone here?
Thanks in advance
Regards,
Charles
Hi Charles:
Reach out to your former customers and all of your connections. People refer you, not your company. If they know you did well by them, they will be glad to help you out.
Check out this article http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/your-new-referral-network-its-always-about-the-people-you-know/