Do you enjoy cold calling? You should — if for no other reason then you’ll be amazed how well your business will do when you take pride in your cold calling time. This year, work to grow your business by adopting a positive attitude. Need help with that?
Here are seven ways to increase your motivation, and your cold-calling success.
1. Take a Look in the Mirror
Do you have a mirror near your work area? Get one. No, it’s not for fixing your hair or your tie. Your physical presence comes through in your phone voice. All those bad habits — slouching, frowning, fidgeting — can come through to the prospect on the other end of the line.
You may have heard it’s important to smile, but this is about more than just smiling. Stand up. Stretch. Move around. Breathe deeply. Take a seat on the edge of your chair. And smile of course. Now you’re ready to make a call, a call that’s going to be a better call that the one you would have made before preparing physically.
The mirror? That’s to keep you honest. If you look over and don’t like what you see, stand up and repeat.
2. Picture Yourself Successful
You haven’t made a call yet, but your attitude before you pick up your headset can make all the difference. Does the call go well? Or not?
It’s true that the world around us is unpredictable, but you can still have an effect on the outcome with the right attitude. Manifest the result you want to see — a successfully closed lead.
Your confidence is infectious. Prospects can hear it and will respond to it. If they’re ready to buy, you’ve already done a good bit of the work of putting them at ease and gaining their trust by picturing success.
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3. Practice, Practice, Practice
Attitude will certainly take many salespeople far, but on its own, it’s not enough. You still have to know what you’re talking about and say the right things in the right manner. You need to practice your script.
Even though you wrote your script and you likely called leads yesterday, it’s still important to practice. Running over your script helps sync your mind, body, and spirit (or attitude), getting you ready to make a good cold call.
4. Free Yourself from Expectations
I admit, combined with number two, this is a bit of a balancing act. Yes, picture yourself making the call and achieving your goal, but don’t become too attached to winning every time. You won’t. If you become too invested in each lead, if your expectations are too high, if you don’t disconnect your performance from your results, you could easily get discouraged when things don’t go as planned.
However, try looking at it this way: you made the call, so that’s a success. You’re putting forth your best effort, so that’s a success. And if you don’t make the sale, consider it a success if you can approach the next call having learned something.
Learning can be its own reward. A worthwhile experience, even if it’s disappointing, is never a waste of time.
Furthermore, it’s difficult to answer the customer’s objections well or truly focus on solving their problem or addressing their need if you’re too focused on closing. Because it’s not about you, it’s about the customer!
5. Go Forth and Cold Call Some Leads
It’s time to take the plunge and make some calls. Smile. Visualize. Follow your script. Focus on the customer. Talk to a prospect, and then follow with the next tip.
6. Celebrate, Learn, and Continue Onwards
The call you just finished could’ve gone one of two ways — either you moved the prospect closer to a sale, or you learned something.
Being able to reflect on your performance can be invaluable — just don’t let judgment enter the picture. If you made a misstep, you made a misstep. You’re not a bad salesperson because of it. In fact, you’re ahead of the game if you can acknowledge where things went wrong and fix it.
If your call was successful — congratulations. Schedule your follow-up and keep your momentum going. If it wasn’t, note what went well, what could’ve gone better, and apply those lessons to your future calls.
7. Repeat As Necessary
Your first call of the day is done, but even if you made a sale your work is far from finished. There are more leads that need a solution to their problem and a need met. So go forth and make more calls.
Don’t be afraid to move around again, take another picture your success, and run through your script to fix any stumbles you noted in number six. You’re really resetting yourself for success, so the added time is worth it.
Now that you’re motivated to cold call, it’s possible you realize you could use some fresh leads to practice with. Consider topping up your supply at the Aged Lead Store, which has thousands of high-quality leads to get your business off to a great start in the new year. Happy cold calling!
