Cold Calling: 6 reasons that should change your sales behavior

Cold Calling: By Kelley Robertson, author of The Secrets of Power Selling, via SOLDLAB

Bring up the subject of cold calling with a group of sales people and you are assured of a lively conversation as they lament about the challenges associated with this task.

There is no question that it is difficult to connect with the right person in a company. It can be frustrating dealing with gatekeepers, receptionists, and executive assistants. Not to mention that decision makers seldom return voice mail messages. And, if you happen to connect with them, they often brush you off before you get a chance to tell them about your product or service.

Let’s turn the tables for a moment and take a look at cold calling from a company’s perspective. Here are six reasons why many companies hate sales people who cold call:

1. The sales person is uninformed. While people in sales will argue that one purpose of a cold call is to gather information about the company, employees in that organization will tell you that calls like this only demonstrate that the caller is uninformed and ill-prepared.
2. The call is an unwelcome interruption. Virtually every cold call is an interruption and because most employees are extremely busy, the calls are unwelcome interruption. Certainly, some people will say that if you don’t want to be interrupted that you should not answer your telephone. However, when the call originates from an inside extension, the natural impulse is to answer the call. This leads us to our next point.
3. The sales person uses manipulative tactics to make contact with the decision maker. Because of the challenges associated with cold calling many sales people resort to using a variety of tactics to connect with the key decision maker. These can include asking for a different department and then asking to be transferred or misrepresenting who they are or the reason for their call.
4. The company has no use for the product or service that is being pitched. Some sales people will say that the purpose of their call is to determine whether or not their product or service is applicable to the company they are calling upon.
5. The sales person refuses to take no for an answer. Certainly persistence is an essential sale skill. However, hanging on like a pit bull and refusing to take no only serves to piss off the other person. And any chance you had of meeting or connecting with that person goes down the drain.
6. The sales person is rude to the receptionist, gatekeeper or executive assistant. Too many sales people treat the gatekeeper with disdain or like a second-class citizen. These individuals fail to realize that many gatekeepers can influence with whom the decision maker meets.

So, what does this mean for you, the sales professional? It means that you have an uphill battle if you rely on cold calling to build your business. It means that you should employ alternate — more productive, successful — methods, such as networking and referrals.

http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/11/15/Why-Companies-Hate-Sales-People-Who-Cold-Call/

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