Cold calling. Time management. These are two of the most familiar terms in the day of any salesperson or small business owner. Many continue their cold calling efforts day in and day out, trying to squeeze in as much cold calling as possible to maximize their sales prospecting efforts. The more time spent cold calling, the more you will sell, right? But cold calling takes up a big chunk of your day. Especially if you plan to become a top producer by cold calling.
And therein lies the other problem: Time management. Salespeople are in a unique situation because most are forced to do the majority of their work during business hours, when people are available to meet and take sales calls. Cold calling must be done during business hours (or during limited evening hours in the case of B2C sales, such as life insurance). Appointments must be held during business hours. Presentations and proposals must also be conducted then. And to make time management issues even worse, mandatory sales meetings, company training, and other required activities manage to eat up every spare minute you might have left over.
Time management is a real problem for most any salesperson. When you consider all of the work involved in making enough sales to be successful - prospecting, follow-ups, appointments, creating proposals - not to mention sales meetings and time with your sales manager and other company activities - it can seem insurmountable at times. This is especially true after a really good month, when customer service issues can easily steal most of your free time.
What is an overworked salesperson to do?
Well, if you take a step back and look at the big picture, the one activity that takes up most time is obvious. Prospecting. And what does prospecting generally mean? Yes - cold calling!
Here's my simple solution to solving the time management dilemma: Stop cold calling!
Now, that answer isn't going to be popular with most sales managers along with the 'old timers' out there, but it works. That one lone change to my sales activity exploded my sales career and made me a top producer almost instantly, so much so that word of my success spread fast and before I knew it I had all of my co-workers wanting to learn from me, all of my competitors wanting to hire me, and just about everyone wanting to network with me.
I know it may sound unrealistic for me to tell you that I became a huge success almost instantly once I stopped cold calling, so let's revisit one of my favorite paragraphs from Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich to back up my statement:
"When riches come, they come so quickly and in such great abundance that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years."
There are three main reasons for this. First, if you're exceeding your quota by cold calling, then chances are that cold calling takes up a tremendous amount of your selling time. What would happen if you could free up that time and spend it face-to-face with highly qualified prospects who are ready, willing, and able to buy from you right now?
(And if you're not exceeding your quota by cold calling, you need to come up with an alternative, fast.)
Second, cold calling is a non-leveraged activity. (If you have my system you already know how big of a role leverage plays in it.) In other words, when you're cold calling you can only contact one person at a time. This is a slow and inefficient process. What would happen if you could put a system in place that would generate leads for you - more than just one at a time - while you are out signing contracts and picking up checks?
Third, statistics show that cold calling generates the absolute poorest quality of leads. In fact a recent university study concluded that over 80% of decision makers in business absolutely, positively will not respond to a cold call. To make matters worse, the close rate for leads generated from cold calling are among the lowest of all. When you consider all of this, it becomes obvious that cold calling is not only the worst choice for generating leads, but it creates a time management nightmare.
The solution I'm proposing here satisfies the two greatest desires of all salespeople:
1. More leads and more sales 2. More free time
If you want to become one of the elite top producers in sales, cold calling will never get you there. It's time to stop cold calling and begin implementing systems and techniques that will generate hot leads from people who are ready to buy right now without any cold calling. You'll not only increase your sales numbers dramatically, but will solve your time management issues as well!
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New York Times best-selling author Frank Rumbauskas has won numerous accolades, such as Readers Choice for Business Book of the Year from 800-CEO-READ, and has been named one of Fast Company's top 30 most influential people online. To learn more, and to download a free 37-page preview of his no cold calling lead-generation system, visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com
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