Does this scenario sound familiar? You have a long list of cold calls to make, and you are dreading them. Reluctantly, you pick up on the phone and call the first number. When the person answers, you launch into your sales pitch. The potential customer listens for a few seconds and then turns you down flat. With a sigh, you mark that call as a failure and go on to call number two.
How Do You View Cold Calling?
Sales people tend to dread making cold calls more than any other method of selling. They often voice worries that they are “annoying” the person on the other end of the phone. Some come right out and say that it is a waste of time because conversion statistics are dismal. But that’s thinking about cold calling through your own lens.
Take a moment and try to see it in a different way. What if, instead of annoying the prospect, you were doing him or her a kindness by offering a solution to a longstanding problem? What if you are just what the prospect needs? He or she just doesn’t know it yet.
How Can I Help You?
If you use a script when you make calls, it probably focuses heavily on the strong points of your products or services. Some scripts are little more than a long, droning list about how great whatever you’re offering is.
How you would feel if you were on the receiving end of that kind of cold call? As you listened to the sales agent, you’d probably start thinking something along the lines of, “That’s all very nice, but what does it have to do with me?” The next logical steps are the brush-off and the abrupt termination of the call.
Calling from a Place of Kindness
When you make cold calls from a place of kindness, you forget about your conversion rate or your desire to be salesman of the month. Instead, you focus on what you can do to help the person on the other end of the phone. Perhaps you’ve heard through the grapevine that the CEO you’re calling is having a horrible time finding reasonably priced health insurance for his or her employees. Present your product as a way to meet that need and take a giant-sized problem off the CEO’s plate.
If you’re not sure what challenges the person on the other end of the phone is facing, go ahead and ask them. When they respond, make sure you listen to what they say instead of plotting your next line to make a sale.
When you take the point of view that you are a knight in shining armor helping the people on the other end of the phone solve their problems, cold calling becomes much less scary and much less tedious.
