The Sandler rule #7 is described as never have to like prospecting, but you just have to do it. This topic was very important for me when I was doing my internship doing recruiting. My goal was to cold call and fill roles for our clients. When I first started I had to cold call a lot of people and it never went anywhere. I was talking around the office and I started seeing people prospecting with their cold calls. They looked up peoples resumes that fit around the position that needs filled, but instead of running through the script and trying to sell people on the job right away, they just got to know them. The goal of this was by the end of the phone call, they were insterested in being a potential prospect for the job we need to fill. This makes them feel more comfortable making a decision on whether they want to switch jobs and such, but it also shows you are not desprate to just fill that role for money. I started doing my calls this way and I started getting more people interviewed with our cleints. Prospecting is one of the most important things in sales, because its a great way to ease someone into the sale.
BoweryJE22
I can sympathize with the feeling of unfruitfulness of making cold calls. I made cold calls for a political campaign to try to get people to attend an event. I called nearly 200 people from a list and was able to only get about 10-15 people to attend the event. This felt like such a low return for the amount of work put into cold calling.
It’s awesome you’ve gotten some experience in cold calling, that is definitely a great skill to have. Cold calling seems to be something that get easier with the more experience you get in it, even though at the start it may result in a lot of rejection (and may continue to as you go). It’s cool to hear how building the conversation around creating a relationship with the person led to gaining their trust and being able to seek to fit their needs and pitch your product or services in a more natural way. Great post!
Great insight, Hamel. Thank you for sharing about your experience with cold calling. I know for many people that can be a very daunting task. Getting to know the prospect and making them feel important is a much better tactic than simply running through a script. It’s really cool than you learned this idea at such a young age.