Boo! Why Cold Calling has Become So Scary…

Now that average response rates when reaching out to new prospects via email or when leaving voice-mail messages is down to less than 1%, and the fear of rejection is single biggest demotivator for salespeople and entire sales teams, it’s no wonder that trolling for new business has become increasingly more difficult.

Couple that with the fact that decision makers are on the receiving end of an ever-increasing number of vendor solicitations, when the amount of information that is available on the Internet means customers are much less dependent on salespeople for information and ideas, prospecting for new opportunities is down right scary.

Quoting one of my sales managers from the past, “Tom, if it’s harder to find qualified prospects, then you simply need to make more cold calls.” Not surprisingly, this advice has outlived its usefulness given the current selling environment.

So, what are sellers supposed to do? If traditional approaches are no longer producing the desired results, perhaps it’s time to make a few adjustments to your prospecting strategy, and try something different.

As an example, opening with a “killer” phrase like, “I just wanted to take a few brief moments of your time,” is more likely to cause potential buyers to instantly delete your message rather than to favorably respond.

Why, you ask? It’s because when a vendor salesperson says something like, “I would like to…,” prospective customers who are on the receiving end of a steady stream of cold calls are more likely to hear, “I would like to accomplish my sales objectives by…”

While it’s clear what the salesperson is hoping to accomplish, this approach begs the question, “What’s in it for them?” Furthermore, how many deals have you successfully closed where you only needed “a few brief moments” of the customer’s time? I would guess the answer is very few, in which case, one has to wonder how opening with something that sounds disingenuous at best is going to help your sales efforts.

The real game-changer moving forward is understanding what causes prospects and customers to “want to” engagement with a salesperson they don’t yet know or trust. Ultimately, the answer boils down into one of two things: obligation or curiosity.

If we take a step back and ask, how many prospects feel ‘obligated’ to engage with a salesperson they don’t yet know or trust, that number starts too get pretty small, in which case, the business development pipeline and sales forecast tend to suffer as a result.

On the other hand, the only other reason prospects choose to favorably respond to a vendor solicitation is if you were able to pique their curiosity in some way. In fact, I have talking about the need to leverage curiosity as a way to secure more mindshare from key decision makers in important target accounts since my first sales book was published in 1999.

Simply put, if a prospect or customer is not the least bit curious about who you are, or what you can do for them, then filling your pipeline with prospect opportunities becomes a monumental task. Conversely, if you are able to pique a potential buyer’s curiosity about any number of things that are truly important (to them), then separating yourself from the rest of the ‘noise’ in the marketplace and engaging new prospects in a productive dialogue about their needs and your solutions can actually be quite easy, and yield stellar results.

The only remaining question is, what are you doing to leverage curiosity in the sales process? If the answer to that question is unclear, then I would submit that you and the entire rest of your sales team have a huge upside opportunity!