Cold calling can be defined various ways. Here’s one that we’ll operate from in this discussion:
“Phoning or walking up to an establishment or a home without prior notice or permission for the purpose of selling something to someone that can buy.”
Cold calling is often contrasted with “warm” calling where you have a referral to someone whom an existing client believes might buy. Or you might be armed with a lead such as an inquiry that a prospective buyer has made at a web site to receive additional information.
In these cases, your odds of striking up a relationship are thought to be better than when you have nothing but the hope that a stranger, one that isn’t expecting your contact, will be receptive.
Now that voice mail is universal, in one sense it is harder to cold call by phone than it has ever been. For instance, it is rare for me to answer my line if caller I.D. says the other party is “unknown” or “out of the area.” I figure they’ll leave a voice mail if they have a legitimate reason for calling, and the smart ones do just that, making sure to have carefully prepared that “mini-sale.”
Because of voice mail, and the excuse that prospects can make asking us to send an email, we are seldom taking a sale from deep in our end zone, across 100+ yards, into theirs on a single carry. We’re breaking the sale down into a series of downs, some for short yardage. One of the best moves you can make is to set up a telephone appointment, sometimes called a telephone conference.
This is just like a face-to-face meeting. You calendar it, as does your prospect. You confirm it, often by email. When the appointed day and time arrive you phone them. They should have set aside anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes for your conference, and often, they or their assistants will tell you exactly how much time they have carved out for you.
If you get a telephone meeting with someone, it is as if you have completed a pass to the fifty-yard line. You’re halfway to scoring. It’s that important, because your counterpart is already cooperating with you, helping you to sell, explicitly agreeing to listen and to make a reasoned evaluation of your message.
There’s no equivalent “communication contract” operating in cold calls, where people can give you the cold shoulder, and many do.
Once the appointment call is underway, your purpose will probably be getting the prospect to ask you for a proposal, a detailed suggestion as to what to purchase. If you get to this point, you’ve just moved the ball another thirty yards. You’re approaching the red zone, and very likely to score SOMETHING, if you simply execute the fundamentals, and propose a reasonable purchase, earning another ten yards.
Then, all you need to do is to close, which carries the ball the final ten yards and across the goal line. A very savvy car dealer who used to “rassle” with bears, snakes, and tigers on TV once remarked, quite wisely, “To sell somebody something, first you have to get their attention.” Appointment calls do that very well. In a future article I’ll tell you what to say to earn that appointment.
Dr. Gary S. Goodman is a top-ranked negotiation speaker, telemarketing speaker, and customer service speaker at Google, and a distinguished, sought-after sales speaker, motivational speaker, and attorney. President of Customersatisfaction.com, he is a frequent TV and radio commentator and the best-selling author of 12 books and more than 1,700 articles that appear in 25,000 publications. President of Customersatisfaction.com, Gary conducts seminars and speaks at convention programs around the world. His new audio program is Nightingale-Conant’s “Crystal Clear Communication: How to Explain Anything Clearly in Speech & Writing.” His web site is: http://www.customersatisfaction.com, and professional speaking, seminar, and consulting invitations can be addressed to: [email protected]
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