I once heard Donald Trump say, “In selling, you must never appear desperate. As
soon as you look desperate, it’s over.”

A friend and I were talking about the dynamics of a cold call the other day. When
we make that call, we usually hope and expect that the prospect will be receptive to
hearing what we have to say. However, salespeople face increasing resistance to
cold calling, as well as increasing flakiness on the part of prospects who do meet
with them. Instead of thinking, “Ok, this may be interesting,” here’s what most
prospects actually think when they receive a cold call: “Great. You don’t know me
and I don’t know you. You have no idea what my goals are. You don’t even know if
we need what you’re selling, and in spite of all that, you’ve decided to waste my time
anyway with this call.”

What is increasingly becoming the norm is to be rejected by the good, solid
prospects everyone wants, and to get appointments with flakey time-wasters who
will never buy. Flakiness, in particular, is a growing problem thanks to the fact that
prospects are increasingly bombarded with endless advertising as well as endless
salespeople. When you consider the fact that few prospects actually have the
courage to say “no” and instead choose to blow us off and make excuses, it
becomes even more frustrating.

One of the main themes I try to teach salespeople is two-fold: 1) You must be
supremely confident. 2) You must get into the habit of qualifying prospects OUT
instead of merely qualifying them. It is the appropriate response to ever-increasing
flakiness and evasiveness on the part of prospects. It’s our way of communicating to
them, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen” in a non-verbal way. The
idea of taking the lead and qualifying prospects out is scary at first, and as a result
most salespeople aren’t willing to do it, but it will save you lots of otherwise wasted
time with prospects who aren’t really serious, and will free that time up to be spent
with prospects who are going to buy.

It’s important to start all sales relationships from a position of power, and you do
this in two ways: 1) Through your outward presentation. This is easily accomplished
by acting very professional and dressing better than your prospects, rather than
taking the wrong advice of “dressing like your prospects.” It’s easy to say “no” to
someone with whom you’re comfortable, but much more difficult to say “no” to
someone who intimidates you. 2) Through your actions. A great example is
someone who is squirrely about agreeing to an appointment with you. In many
cases, these are the people who finally agree to meet with you but eventually blow
you off without buying. When I found myself in this situation,
I discovered a great way to overcome it. It goes back to the idea of confidence
bordering on mild arrogance, and puts you in the position of power. When you’re
getting the runaround, something like “Well, we’ll let you know when we have time
to pencil you in,” say something like, “Great, let me know. I’m very busy so I need to
know either way – NOW.” This will get rid of time-wasters, and with serious
prospects, will clearly communicate that you’re a serious businessperson, should be
taken seriously, and will not tolerate having your time wasted and otherwise being
disrespected. It will also set you apart from the competition and greatly increase
your chances of getting the sale.

As time goes on and I work with more salespeople, I’m realizing that this idea of
being powerful really overrides everything else, and once you can pull it off, it
overshadows everything. You can do a poor job of presenting and selling and yet
this can carry you all by itself. For anyone who is doubtful about this idea of
presenting yourself as overconfident and even a little bit arrogant, I’ll go back to
Donald Trump since he’s famous for his giant ego. I saw him on Larry King, and as
they were taking live calls, one of the callers openly confronted him about his
massive ego and Larry King jumped on and questioned him about it as well. Donald
Trump simply replied, “Have you EVER met a successful person who didn’t have a
big ego?” After some hemming and hawing from King, Trump repeated the
question to him, and King finally said, “No.”

Moving on from the idea of avoiding an appearance of desperation and creating an
appearance of power, there’s another very good reason as to why prospects who are
uncovered via cold calling are flakey. This one has nothing to do with us and
everything to do with a particular prospect’s mindset and level of sales vulnerability
to begin with.

Most of us have noticed, at some time or another, that prospects who absolutely
refuse to take cold calls and have giant “No Soliciting” signs plastered on their front
doors tend to be the easiest to sell to once you manage to get in front of them.
There are a few popular theories as to why this is so, the most common one being
the idea that since so few salespeople get through to begin with, there is little
competition and therefore a better chance of getting the sale. However, I know the
real reason behind this.

The reason those people are so defensive against sales pitches and have all those
“No Soliciting” signs is quite simple. They are AFRAID of salespeople. They know
very well that they have a very difficult time saying “no,” and as such they are highly
vulnerable to sales presentations and know very well that if a salesperson gets to
them, they’ll probably buy whether they need to or not.

(I never figured this out until I spoke with an expert on social dynamics who has
studied the subject of human social interaction in depth. He explained that the
people who act the coldest and most unapproachable in social settings do so
because they’re overly vulnerable to being seduced and falling in love and therefore
are afraid of what someone’s advances may lead to.)

Now that we’ve explained why those people are the easiest to sell to, let’s look at
the opposite type of prospect: those who willingly take your call and willingly agree
to set an appointment.

If those who are easily sold won’t take your call and won’t agree to meet with you,
why would someone be so agreeable to taking your call and meeting with you?
Exactly. It’s because they have no fear of salespeople. They know right from the
start that there’s little chance of them being sold. Their openness and receptiveness
to your call puts us off-guard. We think we have a great shot at a sale, but in reality
we’re meeting with someone who is 99% certain not to buy.

Since the people who willingly take cold calls usually don’t buy, and the people who
usually buy don’t take cold calls, what’s the solution? Since those who are easily
sold almost always meet with salespeople only when they’ve called the salesperson
first and not the other way around, you must get your message across to these
people in creative and effective ways other than cold calling.

To those highly desirable prospects who are easily sold, all salespeople seem the
same. The only way to win with them is to separate yourself from the rest of the
crowd.

The first way to accomplish this is to be that powerful businessperson who needs
nothing and deserves respect. I think most of us were taught and have gotten into
the habit of treating prospects as superiors and as a result we tend to do whatever
is convenient for prospects and otherwise kiss up to them. We are used to
rearranging our schedules just to meet with that one prospect. Stop this, and start
expecting your prospects to treat YOU with the respect and consideration you
deserve as someone who is not only a business equal, but who has the knowledge
and wisdom to help them and improve their businesses and their lives.

The second way to stand out is to stop cold calling. Nothing will stereotype you as
a typical salesperson faster than a cold call. The way to win with prime prospects is
to get your message across to them in ways that don’t use cold calling. You’ll get in
front of the easy sales, and you won’t have any competition once you get there.

What they fail to realize, however, is the dangerous hidden cost of cold calling.

I’m talking about the effect that cold calling has on salespeople. In my experiences in working with hundreds of companies, doing sales training, sales planning, and coaching individual salespeople, I’ve learned a few basic truths that are valid one hundred percent of the time. First of all, companies that require cold calling have the highest turnover of all sales organizations, upwards of seventy-five percent. Such high turnover is disastrous to a company’s long-term profitability. Companies that run a solid marketing program and provide qualified leads to their sales forces have virtually no turnover.

In the world of salespeople, the number one reason why salespeople quit their jobs is the requirement to cold call. And, as you can guess, the number one reason why top producers choose to stay with their employers long-term is because those employers are providing qualified leads and therefore there is no need at all, let alone any requirement, to cold call.

I personally quit jobs because of the requirement to cold call. On the contrary, I stayed at one particular position for quite a long time and was very prosperous there because my manager was actually against cold calling and worked hard to make sure we always had a decent supply of incoming leads. Not surprisingly, we were the most rapidly expanding branch in the country during my tenure there.

Sales organizations that wish to attract and keep the desirable, most professional top producers out there need to start with the basics and implement a solid marketing plan that will generate a consistent supply of leads for the sales force. Anything else will lead to a lack of talent and high turnover on the sales staff. A requirement to cold call repels great talent and attracts inexperienced salespeople who won’t bring in the big numbers every manager desires. A good marketing system, and the consistent stream of leads it generates, attracts and keeps top sales talent.

I found the advice given in that article to be deeply disturbing to me, especially since it is new and not from a twenty-year-old book from the old school of selling.

The essence of the article is this: Companies that intend to implement a new sales plan must make it mandatory, must hold the salespeople accountable for following it, must let the salespeople know that managers will inspect to make sure the new plan is being followed, and that role plays should be done in training sessions to teach salespeople how to use the new sales plan.

I felt shivers down my spine when I read the part about how managers will hold salespeople accountable, and will inspect to be sure that the plan is being followed. I immediately got the picture of the stereotypical raving lunatic, “little dictator” sales manager who terrorizes his or her salespeople through micro-management and blunt orders.

Is this the kind of organization good salespeople would want to work for? I’m amazed that this kind advice is still being given in this day and age.

I also have a major problem with mandated role playing in training sessions. I hate role plays. I always have and always will. I think they’re stupid and a complete waste of time. They’re absolutely BANNED from my training programs. The biggest problem with role plays is that they’re NEVER realistic. In fact, if you train a salesperson through role plays, he will be completely blind sided and blown out when meeting with real prospects who have real problems and real objections. All of the example sales dialogues I use in my programs have come from REAL sales appointments, those carried out by either myself or other salespeople I know and trust.

When I was in sales, I was almost always a top performer. The only times I was not a top performer was while working at companies that had a mandated sales process that I was required to follow. It always baffled me as to why companies that forced us to follow their plan would hire experienced sales reps. Why not hire inexperienced people right out of college? They won’t have any pre-conceived notions of how to sell, won’t have any prior experience or training, and therefore will blindly follow the company’s system, no questions asked.

Here are a couple of realities that managers and sales directors must face up to:

1. If you want an experienced sales force with a proven track record, you must understand that they already know how to sell. How else could they possibly have a great track record? Attempting to force them to learn a new system and follow it negates their talent and experience and will immediately destroy their top producer status. Proven salespeople excel and perform at their very best when treated like independent contractors.

2. If you really want to implement and mandate a company sales plan, the only way to do that successfully and with little turnover is to hire people with no experience right out of school. And even then, you’d still be much better off with sticking to option 1.

If you want a successful organization, hire the best and place your trust in them that they know how to sell. They’ve done it before and can do it again for you. Don’t derail their performance and undermine everyone’s success by forcing something on them that is totally unnecessary.

What I’m talking about is the requirement by most sales organizations to make cold calls on your time and at your expense. They say that cold calls equal appointments equal sales, but that’s not true anymore. All sales managers are guilty of teaching it, believing it, and using it. “Increase your activity and increase your income” are the mantra. We’re told to do the sales math to “motivate” ourselves. Have you heard this one? “If you make five hundred dollars commission per sale and it takes five appointments to get the sale and twenty calls to get an appointment, then each cold call is worth five dollars in your pocket.”

Did anyone ever really believe this?

Hey boss, put your money where your mouth is! If that were really true, companies would pay us the five dollars per call! They don’t because that equation never works in the real world… for anyone. The simple fact is that we are only paid for completed sales, not for attempts. Directing salespeople to make more calls and increase activity is a weak excuse for a sales manager or trainer to justify his or her job. Cold calling is an expensive waste of your time. The reason companies have you cold calling is because it is a waste of YOUR time and YOUR money, not theirs. You only make money when you sell something, yet over eighty percent of most salespeople’s time is spent looking for someone to sell to.

The bottom line is that we, as salespeople, cannot afford to continue fooling away our time on low-percentage activities like cold calling. It’s a way for companies to save money at your expense. We must focus our attention on activities that get real results in this new Information Age economy, and the effectiveness of cold calling fell dramatically when we left the old Industrial Age and entered this bold new era. Forget cold calling and learn how to market yourself intelligently, systematically, and automatically. Self-marketing is the key to success in today’s selling environment and the “secret” of all those top producers who obviously don’t cold call and won’t tell you what it is they’re doing to make those huge numbers every month. Remember, Napoleon Hill’s great work is entitled “Think and Grow Rich,” not “Work Harder and Stay Broke.” Don’t become a victim of the Cold Calling Conspiracy – learn to market yourself successfully and join the elite club of top producers. I did it and you can too.