Over the summer, I had an internship at State Farm. It was a small office with only 4 other employees so it was very laid back and fun. My boss was very laid back and barely ever spent a whole day at the office. She would give me a list of things to do; mostly auto quotes and sending follow up emails. One time she asked me to call a list of people who had motorcycles and wanted me to call them to see if they wanted to refinance with State Farm Bank. I had no idea what I was supposed to say and she didn’t really give me any directions of what to do. I’m sure I sounded so nervous on the phone which probably made it easy for people to turn me down right away. Afterwards, I was just relieved to have the list done and I didn’t care much that nobody sounded interested. A couple days later, one person called back and ended up refinancing. My boss was so proud of me for getting one person out of around 30 to actually refinance. I didn’t think that was a very good success number, but after talking about this in class I realized maybe that wasn’t too bad. Even though I hated doing it, I got a little experience doing cold calls and if I’m put in that position again I’ll have somewhat of an idea what I’m doing and what type of numbers to expect.
By gibsonam1
BoweryJE22 2 thoughts on “Cold Calling Nerves”
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I think that is one of the really helpful things about this class, is that is gives us good perspectives for past experiences that we have had in sales. I know that it has helped some techniques I have used that worked or not worked make sense to me, and made me think about what things I will do in the future. It still is disappointing in cold calling how small of a percentage it can be.
Cold calling is rarely enjoyed by salespeople but its something that must be done every so often. I have never done a cold call but I feel as if it is something that is a big deal until you knock out the first few. Good post!