• This post is the philosophy of a thing
• It’s incomplete, because it’s incomplete
• It’s chapterized so you can get where you’re going quickly
• Part 1 of the series is here: ON BEING GREAT. SALES. AND YOU. PART 1

Whoever you are, whatever you do for a living, you should cold call.

What you cold call on behalf of may vary, some people sell cars, some sell real estate, some are CEO’s calling key clients of the company or institutional shareholders. Whatever it is, we are all, always, selling ourselves.

Watch this brief video. it will mae you go “Ah, yes now I understand”

Books on Sales

People ask me: ‘Is there a good book I can read about how to sell?’
There isn’t. 

Books teach parlor tricks, little linguistic and mental games. Those things will encumber you on the phone, you will be distracted because you will be thinking of the fabled pink elephant.

I wrote about not reading books about sales here.

Emotional reservoirs are easily exhausted and difficult to replenish.

With this in mind we have to be very careful that we use the minimum amount of that energy and get the optimal return on our investment.

This means that we are being properly compensated for selling that fraction of ourselves. Compensation isn’t only money, although the bank accepts that, it is also the appreciation from our colleagues, peers and family, it’s another form of currency.

Be a Sales You

Many people don’t want to perceive themselves as doing anything “sales” because they have associated it with:

• A sleazy person who uses emotional coercion and misrepresentations
• They are deeply afraid of making their “identity” vulnerable, and for them an identity killer is hearing “no” – because they perceive it as a rejection of their “being”

You are not the Dalai Lama.

Whoever you are, you’re not the Dalai Lama, unless you are, in which case disregard.

Also, most likely you are not Batman. You are definitely not Socrates. You are just a person who strives to be great at what they do in the office, at home and in all those millions of discrete transactions that make up a lifetime.

Being GREAT is about using discretionary effort.

The cold call

Don’t call people who aren’t decision makers. Expends too much of our emotional reserves.

Most decision makers such as CEO’s and COO’s don’t mind a GREAT cold call. Once they identify that you are an artist they want the show. It’s human nature, they are captivated and they think about how they present their own company and how they want others to represent the company. They enjoy the hustle and listening to how a product or service is communicated – but they don’t like being cold called badly. So remember, you are doing it for them also, it’s like a resume, but performed.

Figuring out who to call and their phone number/email, takes trial, error and some guesswork. But, too cold call the wrong people – such as those people who aren’t the decision makers or who aren’t in a favorable industry, wastes your emotional reserves, you’ll almost by default get their rejections. You’ll get depressed and exhausted. So don’t do this.

Some people like to fail

Failing affirms themselves, and they like to wallow in this perception, they actually take pride in it.

I have seen this with about 70% of the sales and business people I have encountered.

A person doesn’t have to be extraordinarily successful, but don’t be the person who isn’t successful. It actually takes more effort to be unsuccessful than being very successful. To be unsuccessful you have to work too many hours, you have to work too hard, you have to lose sleep and so on.

In advance of cold calling

Know that you must condition the prospect from the first first contact that you will be asking, or expecting referrals.

This does many things, one of them is it becomes an “exchange” – you are a good salesperson and make me look good in front of the boss/fellow employees, etc. “You are a great point person and go above board to make us a good client – and I will return that effort with referrals and allow you to make a good commission.”

This doesn’t mean you have to be forceful, cos you shouldn’t be. One way to introduce this is by saying almost all of your clients come from referrals. This lets them know when they are a client that you have that expectation. The language of biz.

It is not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Use your voice to convey emotion, passion and also interest in them and their business. The person on the other side of the phone isn’t listening to every word, they are responding to your voice, its sound, its authority, the image that is formed in their mind of who you are, and the office environment you are calling from. They listen to a voice like it’s a melody.

But it also has to be quick. The conversation can’t be too long because then you run the risk of talking too much. Instead of informing them, you are creating confusion, and their natural response is to shut it down – and career self preservation. If you can’t explain it succinctly, they can’t explain it internally to their various internal departments, etc.,

Find an advocate

They must trust that whatever your product, you will hold their hand, that you won’t embarrass them in front of the boss or colleagues. And, if there are disruptions you will advise them so they can mitigate.

What is your goal for the call?

What is the optimal result of your cold call? Most likely it is not a ‘sale’ because few quality products can or should be transacted from one call. It is my experience that a cold call should be the first step in a sequence to a close.

Sales is an assembly line and you are moving it along, station to station. In the call you have to lay out what the steps are.

People want to buy when it’s frictionless, and the unknown and indecision is taken away from them. Saying “sign here…” doesn’t accomplish that, because then you are taking away their own power, sense of worth and professional identity.

The straightest line between two points

If I don’t know that person and I want to, I get the phone number and I cold call

You should always practice a pitch to get a sense of ‘is it right’ and also role play beyond the initial intro. Do this with a loved one, a friend, a pet (not an iguana!) or record yourself. You have to learn to be economical with your words. Time the pitch so that you activate them to respond, beginning a positive and productive exchange.

Listen for the music of your pitch, not like a song, but it has to flow.

People have difficulty briefly describing what it “is.”

Even if it’s an intangible type of service it does not require a frothy explain’r. Don’t do that. More words make an intangible intangible’r.

The reason you think it is helpful and explains ‘it’ is because you yourself don’t understand exactly what ‘it’ is, so you keep talking until it makes sense. Don’t do this.

You should be able to explain ‘it’ within about 60 words at most. You are describing the essence of a thing. The other side understands that, they don’t want to hear you ramble – because that puts the burden on them to ‘figure it out’ for themselves – and then tell you what ‘it’ is.

Don’t try to persuade

Waste of your energy and it will take years to follow up with “how about now?”

If a company is not a prospect, let them know that they are not and why. You may lose them, but you will likely gain them as a future referral source. It is also possible that you are doing the legendary ‘take away’, taking them off the table as a prospect winds up putting them back on. If you tell them they are not a prospect it actually increases their desire to find out: “why not?” 

‘Why not?’.

You: “Well it’s because our clients are ___” (say something aspirational to the prospect like)

• “May be a little closer to profitability than your company is right now” or
• “They are at that stage right now where they are more focused on improving their internal processes or gaining productivity” etc.

So we begin by knowing what it is and how it improves their life, be it professional or personal and elegantly and economically telling them ‘what it is’. It has to be something that they can quantify and qualify the improvement, and this activates them to move along to the next steps in a process.

You must know your competition and be honest about the differentiators. 

Competition

If you tell me you don’t have competition, it’s because you don’t understand your own product or service from the prospect’s point of view.

Prospects hate industry jargon, never use a term they are unfamiliar with unless you can make it simple like “we call this ____.”

Prospects also do not differentiate vendors by relatively small nuances. Most likely, the difference that you think is HUGE is unimportant to them and at worst they can work around your differentiator and have a perfectly adequate solution.

Good cold calling is your ability to listen attentively and respond precisely. 

It’s not about the pitch, it’s about the listen.

What does ‘ability to listen’ mean? Be able to listen to the sound of their breath, the pauses in their words can say as much as their words themselves, it can give you a direction on steering your own questions and responses.

Always begin with “hi, my name is” – because this takes only about 1 second but it creates human interaction, it’s intimacy, and intimacy is a premium product.

Begin your brief explain’r: first being a tiny bit rushed, not too much, not ‘excited’ but just a bit rushed.

This is because you only have about 6 seconds in which they will decide if they want the call to continue, so be aware of that and make those seconds count.

• “I work for___ , are you familiar with who we are and what we do?” Or you can say
• “I am an ___ (accountant for example)” or “I have a startup company and we do _____, and this will make your work/life (or whatever) better by _____.”

Something like that, it’s fluid. Either way, it’s quick.

You may also push the 6 second envelope a little, particularly to drop the name of a marquis client. Referencing prospects or clients that are in similar industries, similar demographics, similar psychographics, similar geography.

It may seem a little forced to introduce another company into the mix but from the listener’s perspective it is a certificate of authenticity, like a good housekeeping seal of approval.

Some people you are cold calling have difficulty saying no, or letting you know they are not interested. You have to listen for this and don’t persist. It’s okay to let them go.

Don’t call them looking for a friend

This is a crutch that your ego has created to make it easier for you to receive rejection and it’s a crutch that the listener’s ego has created for rejection.

Another way to push the time envelope is to be clear with what the objective of the call is – set the agenda: how much time it will take and what you would like to discuss. Let them buy into that little sliver, or not.

If they say no, get clarity as to why ‘no’.

• “Hi, my name is ___ I work with/for/I started ____. Can I take up just 20 seconds of your time and tell you about what we do?”

Notice that that has used up your allotment of  seconds, but if they say yes, you jumped the time hurdle.

If they respond in the affirmative you can now slow down a little bit because you are over the 6 second hurdle. Be a bit calmer, that energy will be felt by them. They know they are over the hurdle, they will relax a bit also.

Because you are listening, your emphasis should be on being responsive to what they actually say. Their objections should be pursued with your genuine inquisitiveness.

Ask them

“Can you help me understand why?” You can even offer them a reason so they can say something like, “no, the reason it’s because…” and then you’re back to being on your pitch.

The entire middle of the convo is all on you. Good luck with that. Keep it quick, ten minutes covers a lot of territory.

How to end a call

End all business calls with “have I neglected to ask you anything, do you have any questions for me?”

Are sales people obsolete?

Has AI wrought the end of the salesperson?

Watch this video

Part 1 of the series is here: ON BEING GREAT. SALES. AND YOU. PART 1

The End?