Discount Prices on Autodialers for Telemarketing!             

Cold calling, for many years, was the preferred method of generating new business for practically all companies and salespeople worldwide.  However, it has literally been decades since it has led in terms of results.  In spite of this, sales managers in nearly all companies, large and small, continue to demand that salespeople spend their productive time cold calling instead of doing things that will bring them face-to-face with qualified prospects who want and need their products or services and are ready, even eager to buy.  Any time sales are down, those familiar words "cold call more" and "you need to increase your activity" are heard from sales managers, regional directors, and even VPs and CEOs.

Hundreds of thousands of salespeople have been mistrained and misled by otherwise well-meaning corporate trainers, sales managers, and the literally hundreds of books that can be found in the business section of any bookstore.  They continue to bang their heads against the wall, wasting hour after hour and day after day cold calling with dismal results.  However, the belief that "cold calling works" has been so frequently drilled into the minds of most salespeople that they continue to do it, believing it will magically lead to success.

The effectiveness of cold calling went by the wayside as our society moved out of the Industrial Age and into the Information Age, which many symbolically mark with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.  Especially now in our time of slow economic growth and reduced spending, cold calling is by far the least efficient way to find new business and in these tough times, the result in many cases is literally zero.  As cold calling continues to fail and results diminish, otherwise talented salespeople who've simply been mistrained find themselves on probation or out of work and their employers lose huge dollars in terms of lost revenues and high turnover in the sales department. 

Following are some of the key reasons we believe cold calling should literally be banned by all sales managers and sales organizations that wish to excel:

• Cold calling destroys your status as a business equal.
  When you approach a prospect in a cold call situation, it's readily apparent to everyone involved that you need them and their business but they don't need you.  The prospect is instantly placed in a position of power and superiority over you.  Even if your company is a business equal or superior, you are perceived as needy and inferior by the prospect.  As all negotiating experts explain, perception is everything.  Even if you have power, if you're perceived as not having it, you don't have it.
  
  
• Cold calling limits production and wastes time.
  The typical sales training model goes something like this: 
  
  "Take your quota and divide it by the average dollar amount per sale to determine how many sales you need each month.  Then multiply that by the number of proposals you need to produce to get one sale.  Then multiply that by the number of appointments you need to have to get to a proposal, and multiply that by the number of cold calls necessary to get an appointment.  Divide by 20, and that's how many cold calls you need to make every business day." 
  
  The obvious problem with this is if the salesperson is brutally honest with him/herself about closing ratios and cold call to appointment ratios, the number of cold calls required is unrealistic and there simply aren't enough hours to do them as well as other work such as appointments, proposals, etc.  In addition, you're not using the power of leverage when cold calling.  You can only be in one place or making one phone call at a time and can make only so many cold calls in a day, week, month, or year.  Your potential becomes finite and is strictly limited by how many cold calls you make.
  
  
• Cold calling makes timing work against you, not for you.
  Do doctors call you at random times to ask if you happen to be sick and therefore in need of an appointment?  Do dentists call you unexpectedly and ask if you have a toothache?  Do mechanics call you without warning to find out if your car happens to be broken down that day and in need of repair?  Of course not.  In fact, the very idea of getting these kinds of calls is ridiculous and may even have you laughing, but this is exactly what most prospects think when you cold call them.  If you're lucky enough to find a prospect who is in a buying mode for your product, chances are they've already called some of your competitors for proposals or quotes and the odds of your getting the sale are already stacked against you.  In addition, because cold calling destroys your status as a business equal, you automatically appear inferior to your competition.
  
  
• Cold calling instantly puts you in a negative light because prospects find cold calls to be intrusive, annoying, disrespectful of their time and bothersome.
  Businesspeople, especially those with enough importance and authority to wind up on prospect lists, are extremely busy people and the last thing they look forward to is getting ten cold calls during a stressful day.  You're seen as a burden on their time, an annoyance, and a distraction from important work. 
  
  
• Cold calling might get you into trouble.
  In our home state of Arizona and in many other states, it is now unlawful to make a telephone cold call to either a business or consumer without first obtaining and paying for a Telephone Solicitors' license or obtaining an exemption from requiring a license from the state.  Either way, you may face heavy legal penalties if you make telephone cold calls without first completing miles of government red tape.  Many businesses are fed up with cold calling salesmen who repeatedly violate "No Soliciting" signs and some members of our staff have even been face-to-face with the police while cold calling, back in the early days of our careers.
  
  
• Cold calling destroys salespeoples' attitudes.
  Let's face it.  Even the "rah-rah" trainers and managers who hold up cold calling as the solution to all of life's problems will admit it:  Everyone HATES cold calling!  It's a pretty basic fact of human psychology that forcing yourself to do something you find unpleasant puts you in a bad mood and instantly causes your attitude to shift from positive to negative.  Why, then, would anyone continue to do something that undermines your ability to sell at the most basic, subconscious level?