Forget Cold Calls: Be Invited To Sell - Every Time

Welcome to another edition of the 60 second sales show. I am Dave Lorenzo, I'm the guy who helps you make a great living and live a great life. Today we are going to focus on the one thing that every sales professional, every entrepreneur, every business leader thinks they have to do but they absolutely hate to do. We're going to focus on it because I'm going to give you permission to just forget about it. I'm talking about cold calling. The dreaded cold calling.

Let me let me drop a number on you here. Let me give you a statistic. This statistic is according to salesforce.com and I think actually ... Leap job actually quoted it out most recently, only 2% of cold calls results in an appointment. Only 2%, so if you think about that for a minute you're a sales professional, you're at your desk, you're banging away on the phones, you make 100 phone calls, you get two appointments to get in front of someone who's a prospective client. If you're the best person on the planet at closing you're going to close half of those, so one out of every 100 cold calls you make where you connect with someone, only one of those results in a sale. Think about the time it takes for you to do the research to find out who good cold calling prospects are, think about the time it takes for you to sit down and bang away at the phones, all right. The time element of cold calling alone is daunting, even if you can set aside time element. Think about the frustration element of talking to 98 people who tell you, "No." Who tell you, "You suck." Who tell you to stop calling.

The frustration element and that confidence crushing that you have to endure when you're a cold call sales person is incredible. But even if you can get past that, even if you can get past that time investment of making 100 calls to get two people to agree to see you. If you can get past the confidence crushing that it takes every time you here, "No, go away, stop calling me." If you can get past all of that, think about the ineffectiveness of going to a meeting of completing an appointment. If you do a webinar if that's where your initial appointments take place. If you're doing an in-person meeting, if it's a telephone sales appointment. Think about the uphill battle you face if someone has set that appointment for you via a cold call you walk in there and this person has no idea who you are, and you're starting from a completely and totally cold start.

It's horrible. It's sucks, it's ineffective, and it's a huge waste of time. Yet just last week I went to see here in the in the Miami area, I live in Miami, here in the local area. I went to see someone who's known as a sales Guru. Someone who gets paid upwards of $10,000 for a speech on sales. Someone who's conducted live events where people paid $500 or more per person to go see her talk about how to sell, and had a close deals. I go to this event, I'm excited, I'm fired up, this is what I do. I love to engage people, I love to help people and stealing is helping, so I'm thinking, "I'm going to hear this Guru tell me something new. Something outstanding that I can use myself in my business to get in front of more people. To help more people."

 

I walk in the room, there's great music, there's fantastic energy, and the guru takes the stage and half of the 90-minute presentation was spent on cold calling techniques. Wow! I was crushed. I was so disappointed. The reason I was so disappointed my friends is because I could not believe that in this day and age, when there are so many ways to connect with people, and to show how your expertise can be valuable to people, this sales Guru, who by the way is probably ten years younger than me, should be hip to the way millennials do business. This sales guru is advocating getting on the phone, going through lists, dialing numbers over, and over, and over again.