Sales Chump

I’m not going to beat around the bush or try to make cold calls out to be better than they are… cold calling sucks.  There I said it.  I’m a sales rep and I hate to cold call.  How many of you enjoy it?  If more than 1 of 10 people said yes, I would say there’s something wrong.  It’s not that as sales people we don’t like making new contacts, it’s more of a psychological thing.

I know as a sales rep myself I fear rejection.  This is something I’ve worked out of my system and no longer fear it.  If you complete a good sales process, you will know whether or not a deal will go through.  But I digress from the point of this blog/rant…. cold calls suck.

While cold calling leads isn’t fun, sometimes we find ourselves having to do it to generate new prospects.  Referrals and being an “order taker” is nice but it doesn’t always work out that way.  At some point in your sales career you will cold call. While after a while you can use your customers to generate hot leads and give you referrals, a cold call at some point in time is going to be required.

For example, the other day one of my customers (which was a complete cold call right out of the phone book) referred another franchisee who owned several more locations.  While I get a lot of referral business now, my referrals all started from a cold call at some point when I look back at it.

So what is the point of this rant you ask? I’m getting there…

When you are cold calling, you most likely don’t have much information about the decision maker or the business.  You will find yourself having to work on bypassing the gatekeeper and various other things.  There are some things that can make your cold call easier:

1. Goal for Sales Call - Have a goal in mind for your cold call… what do you want to accomplish on this call?
2. Know the Business You’re Calling - Have an idea of what this business does and what is important to them.
3. They Aren’t Expecting Your Call - Remember they weren’t expecting your call today, that you are interrupting their day.

There are many other things that will help you on your cold call.  For me I have these goals in mind when making my first cold call to a lead:

1. Get Decision Maker name and email
2. How High of a Priority This Decision Is
3. Time to go further in depth about the product

While cold calls aren’t the best thing in the world.  Good things do come from them when the right approach is taken.  If you have to make cold calls, make sure you have clear goals laid out for the call, know the business you’re calling, and realize you are interrupting their day to talk to them.

As always, please chime in with tips that you may have for cold calls.

At some point in your sales call you will have to deal with a gatekeeper.  Unless you have a contact for this particular company, you will come into contact with someone other than the decision maker will be dealing with in your sales process.  Whether you stop into the business or are cold calling, you’ll most likely run into the receptionist.  Hitting it off with the gatekeeper is very important.  If you piss off the gatekeeper, your message may not make it to the decision maker.

Let’s think about this for a moment.  You’re an outsider, they know the decision maker and work with them every day… who is the decision maker going to believe?  Take some time to build rapport with the gatekeeper. I don’t know how many times having a strong relationship with the gatekeeper has paid off.  There are even a few customers where the gatekeeper and I talk more than the decision maker.

I know, you’re asking how do I do this?  Well there’s no one way to do it and it’s more of a combination of things in order to accomplish this.

1. Make them feel important! - There job isn’t always just answering the phone and blowing off everyone who calls for the decision maker.  Even when their only job is to answer the phone, make their job important.  Treat them with respect as if they were the person making the decision.  Get to know them if you will be calling to talk with the decision maker a lot.
2. Gatekeeper to Hero - They hear the decision maker talking all day about complaints. One day a complaint about something you can provide a solution for may come up.  If you haven’t spent time with the gatekeeper explaining what you can do, they wouldn’t be able to bring your service up.  The gatekeeper may be able to present your service better than you can as they know what is top priority for the company better than you do.
3. Distinguish yourself - Don’t be like every other sales person that calls asking for the decision maker.  Make yourself stand out.  When you state your name and company, you want them to respond like you’re a friend who they haven’t talked to in a while.  Use humor and creativity to accomplish this.  I have a co-worker who does this very well by talking about things non-related to our business or theirs.
4. Turn them into your assistant - No, don’t have them do your job for you.  Use the gatekeeper to get information about the company, decision maker, how things work around there.  The better you understand the company, the easier to realize what is important to the.  The gatekeeper can assist you with this greatly.

Now there are a lot of other ways to turn the gatekeeper into an ally rather than an adversary. With the gatekeeper on your side, you are a lot better off than the other way around.  Feel free to share a technique that has worked for you in the past by posting a comment.