Cold Calling #1

I recently read a post on Linkedin were sales people were complaining about politeness on the phone and how more senior people tend to have better manners. In others words, the sales person made the point that more junior members of the team tend to be less polite than senior ones.

To be fair, I think he does have a point. There is definitely a correlation between more senior people and professionalism. In fact, I often find the more corporate the organisation the more professional people tend to be.

This isn't always the case though, recently a senior manager at a well known brand put the phone down on me. I think I managed to get 5 words out. I would love to say that I just blocked it out and moved on. In reality it was hard to take, the guy didn't give me a chance but you just have to accept it as part of the job. In fairness to him, he might have been having a shitty day and my call was the last straw - who knows.

I think it is important to remind our selves that at the end of the day he hasn't asked to be called and after all no body wants to be cold called. I get cold called all the time and I always try and be polite and provide honest feedback. I respect what the individual is trying to do but that is because I do the same job. If you aren't in sales you will never truly understand and to be fair, why should you. Some people suggested that people have changed but I don't think they have. Engaging with a new contact has always been a tough ride.

I remember at the start of my career (1995) you could phone a business and ask for the IT manager and often they would provide a name and try to put you through. They might even provide a DDI :-)

Then things started to get harder, companies introduced the "No Name" policy. This is when I think I started to use Linkedin because it allowed me to get a name which then allowed me to pass the reception name policy. (Unfortunately too many people are relying on Linkedin now but that is for another post)

In tandem to this, reception teams started to be trained better to field inbound sales calls. This means it is harder to break through today than it was say 20 years ago but it has always been tough and it always will be. The best customers are always the hardest to reach and that has never changed.

In reality, the vast majority of people are professional. One in five hundred will be rude, put the phone down on you but you have just got to try and accept it and move on.

My first sales manager David Andrews gave me a great piece of advice that I still use today. I had just started at the company and my first task was to call every school in the Yorkshire region and ask them if they were thinking of replacing their photocopier.

I remember the 1:1 distinctly and David asking me to act like a robot. He said, imagine that we had created a sales robot. He asked me to consider how a robot would behave, if it was programmed to make 500 calls. Would it care what people said, would it stop, would it moan? of course not. A robot would just keep going and repeat the process until it stopped.

He suggested that I imagine that I am robot (machine) and just follow the task step by step. I followed his advice and lo and behold I started to identify schools that were interested.

To this day, in my mind, when I prospect, I try and imagine I am a robot and that works for me. It is hard and we are all emotional people who hate rejection but the more you get into the right mindset the words effect you less and you become numb to the negative feedback.

When I am at my best, I am almost in a different world mentally. I simply do not care and follow the process. I don't want to get all deep on you here but that is where I try and take my mind when I am making those awful first calls.

Some thoughts that might help: