Cold-Calling Sales is Dead

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

If there is a shred of doubt left in your mind, let me run this by you:

“Hi Laura, my name is Chris Greaves; I was reading the press release from yesterday and was struck by the number of complex documents you guys must produce”.

“Uh-huh”, she said.

“I thought you’d like to take a look at my free promotional tool; it’s called The Indexer and it produces an index of every interesting word in your document”.

“Uh-huh”, she said. And then she continued “I don’t see a use for it in our business.”.

Not “I don’t see a use for it in our business right now”, but “I don’t see a use for it in our business:.

Period.

And There You Have it

(1) There was no relationship

(2) There was no problem to solve.

Why WOULD I buy a new roof or a new driveway if I live in an apartment?

Don’t bother calling back, ever, and count as wasted the ten minutes spent screwing up courage to make the call, and the ten minutes spent licking wounds in the kitchen making another cup of coffee.

Because that telephone can really BITE.

You know what I mean.

There’s no future in making calls like that.

Ever!

So don’t make them.

Do Something Else Instead

I’m tempted to say “Do anything else instead”, but in my heart I know that Laura wasn’t buying because we don’t have any kind of a relationship.

Instead, take that same twenty minutes and put it into building a relationship.

The first step will still cost you something (time, thought, a postage stamp) but it won’t cost here anything.

Then spend time building that relationship.

Talk to Me !

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