Matthew Kimberley

A LinkedIn user asks: Whats the point of cold calling by phone?

Wendy Weiss recommends taking a reality check if you experience “Telephone Terror”

And on the subject of terror, “most salespeople would rather drink a warm cup of sour milk than make a cold call. In terms of fears, cold calling ranks up there with public speaking and death” – via How to make a success of cold calling.

And most of us are afraid of “no”, but Kelley Robertson reminds us that “you need to recognize that every ‘no’ brings you one call closer to making an appointment or landing a sale.”

Confidence on the phone is 80% of the mountain climbed.

Lushin and Associates remind us that the key to sounding successful is sounding like you don’t need the business (and reference Tommy Boy).

And whatever you do, don’t sound like a salesman. Artificial sales enthusiasm is – artificial.

And Marcus Cauchi, in this video, says that “if you want to get really proficient at selling, you’ve got to behave like you’ve been married for thirty years … to the wrong person.”

• When getting past gatekeepers, remember: You are important.
• The difference between warm-calling and cold-calling
• Decision makers hate cold calls and have no interest in taking your call because all you do is waste their time. Period.

Phuggers are like chuggers, apparently, in this piece about “low-paid workers chained to their telephones in call centres”.

(Incidentally, a “chugger” is a “poor sod you see standing around Oxford Street desperately trying to sign punters up to charities you’ve never heard of.”)

SalesMarks, meanwhile, tells us that “In writing a cold calling script, there are a few things to remember” and cold calling might be pure S&M.

2010 will be the death of cold calling as we know it, allegedly … and last but not least:

Cold-calling is tough, humbling, depressing and exhilarating, all in the space of a day.

• “I really feel that cold calling is the most important thing I do to generate business.”
• “It’s scary, of course. But it’s all up to you. You just have to hammer the numbers. If the other salespeople are doing 50 calls a week, I’m doing 100.”
• “Sometimes cold calls do pay off – even in venture capital.”
• “You can call it cold calling, warm calling, or quasi-cold calling, but in the end, it is up to you to have the skill, ability, and savvy to take the first conversation and use it to advance the sales cycle—while your VP stands on his soapbox and or on a Webinar proclaiming cold calling is dead”