Getting Started with Cold Calling

Empathy or sympathy?

Imagine for a moment that there’s a little Girl Scout on the street carrying boxes of different flavored cookies, and she is timidly trying to knock on her neighbors’ doors, but worried that somehow she’ll be booed or snubbed and the doors would just be slammed shut in her face after she offers her cookies for just a few cents? Would you, as a marketer, be empathetic with this little girl? Or sympathetic with her?

If you are empathetic with this little Girl Scout, then you might just have an idea of how she’s feeling just before approaching doors. Will her potential customers know that she is on official business and would just be selling cookies for the good of humanity? Will she be able to speak her rehearsed cookie scripts? Will she make her first order?

Little that we know, a lot of grown ups, even professional salespersons, experience anxiety at the mere thought of making their own cold calls. It’s so normal to feel butterflies fluttering up and down your stomach that just thinking of making the call (whether personal or business) could at times make some folks want to throw up.

The dreaded cold call

However, it is important for me to point out a more exact description of what a cold call really is. A cold call is a personal call, it can be a visit or phone call to someone you know a little or someone whom you really don’t know at all. The main reason for the call is to introduce something you are selling for personal or official business.

Others think that a cold call is only to be made to total strangers taken from phonebooks or referrals from other individuals or companies. On the contrary, this cold call can be made to someone you already know or to a prospect you’re already familiar with. It can be someone you met last month at a party or maybe someone introduced to you by a friend and you found him/her to be a good prospect to sell the product to.

That having been said, contacting someone you know will allow you to break the ice for a moment with some preliminary small talk. Either way, you should try to narrow your prospects in the beginning to the point where you feel comfortable; and once you’ve mastered the “comfort zone” technique you can then move on to more challenging prospects… even those you never even thought of approaching before.

Cold-call symptoms

The ordeal you have to go through at first is making that personal – meaning one on one – physical appearance or telepresence. This can make you so tense that you feel like quitting everything. There are even cold calls that make you feel like you want to disappear in a heartbeat.

Even professionals like doctors, lawyers and professors feel the same way; which is why they depend on friends or clients’ referrals for fear of losing their dignity and good name after making an unsuccessful cold call. But believe it or not, one deep breath can help do the trick.

Nothing can be as uncomfortable as prospecting someone for your cold call. The fear of being rejected, shouted at or being made to feel like a fool are roadblocks which keep you from selling. These very real apprehensions can be overcome with the right attitude combined with guarded planning, preparation and if possible – Training. Believe it or not, good salesmanship is an attribute anyone can acquire.

Take a look at these simple tips on how to Cold Call

Be positive, prepared and confident

Always be positive – Remember that cold calling is a powerful business strategy, but you must first be honest with yourself and have a positive disposition (attitude). Your co-workers and the prospects on whom you’re about to make the cold call should be the people to feel positive about. There must be enthusiasm in your voice that people can feel right away.

Prepare to be prepared – It’s just not enough however, to know the procedure and to have the right attitude. Preparation is a very important element in your approach; so you must prepare the list of prospects to be contacted by phone or in person.

Also learn how the introduction should be done and what prospects do; and perhaps the most important part of all is that your product or service should be something that could be of good use/value them. Being well prepared can turn a simple cold call into real solid business.

I am what I am – Never sound too over reactive or appear obviously nervous on the phone or when you shake your prospect’s hand. Never try to be somebody you are really not with an aim to getting the attention you need. Assume that talking to your prospective customer for the first time should be the key to a lasting relationship.

Cool, calm, poised

Calm down – It is important to anticipate rejection and have a response or responses in that event. However it must be understood that although rejection can be really hard to accept, it is never personal and should not be interpreted as an attack on you. Never interpret the refusal of your product/service as a rejection that could put you down and roll back your progress.

Be patient and learn from your mistakes. You will reap a good harvest if you commit yourself to being persistent, because persistency will also help you find a strategy that will work in the long run; so each turn down must be looked at as the next stepping stone. It is your way of “turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones”

The art of questioning – You cannot expect someone to believe you right away and just sign up after describing your company’s objectives, so you have to ask the right questions. Ask what they do correctly and promptly to help you use it along in the conversation. A surefire attention-getter when opening a conversation can be “May I ask you about something Mr./Mrs. prospect?” People want to help and this question lowers their guard.

The next question might be “Can you help me out about this thing sir/ma’am?” This question does not ask for a yes or no answer but would definitely give you a valuable response that you can use all throughout the interaction. If you imagined that the little Girl Scout on the street asked the same types of questions, then she would have left each doorway with 2 less boxes of cookies in her bag!