Take The Rejection Out Of Cold Calling

Most people do not fear making telephone calls. What they fear is the rejection they might receive from interrupting someone's day. The good news is that there is a way to make the rejection unlikely to occur. It takes some work and though on your behalf first though.

The solution to this is to prepare prospecting lists, your value statement and responses to common objections up front. If you're prepared you get less rejection. This is common knowledge though.

What I want to write about today is a more fundamental change in our approach to cold calling. What I am proposing should take the sting out of interrupting people on the phone for you.

When I started cold calling prospects, many years ago, I received my fair share of rejection. Over the last few years I noticed something interesting. I 've realised that it has been a long time since I was out right rejected. I often come across prospects that do not need my product / service but they tell me this politely. I'm sure it is down to the approach I use and you should be able to adopt or adapt my ideas quite readily.

One thing that has served me well is that I decided to treat the prospects the way I would want to them to treat me. So I started being aware of their time and aim to make my telephone calls as short as possible while still delivering maximum value to the prospect.. After all, I am interrupting their day and asking them to spend a few minutes of their valuable time with me. I made two significant changes to my process. 1. I gave them complete control of the cold call. 2. At the same time I also research the prospects thoroughly. When I completed the research and qualification then I am reasonably certain that they had a problem we could solve. You can never be 100% certain. Your aim is to be as certain as you can be given the limited detail you can glean about the company without talking to them.

Giving Over Control Of The Call

Most sales trainers tell you to keep control of the call. Many sales people do this much to the chagrin of their prospects. My take on it is give them the illusion of complete control so that you can control the process in the background. In other words if you can make them feel they are in control of the call they feel less threatened. This puts you nicely in control of the outcome of the call. Which is all you care about anyway.

This might sound crazy but hear me out.

When I call them I ask them if it is a good time to call. If they say 'no' then I find out when it would be a good time to call and make a note to call them at the time and date they give me. Yes, this does lead to a longer calling cycle than I would like but the end result is worth it. The unstated premise here is that you have a large prospecting list with many other names to call. If your prospecting list consists of a handful of names then this idea won't work. The key is to make sure that you have many names to fall back on. Then it does not matter how long it is before you can call them back.

The powerful part of this comes when you call them back and they get impressed by your diligence.

Not only do I check that they have time to talk to me I take a very passive role in the conversation. I try and read the non-verbal cues they give me. At the same time I am not pushy or underhanded. If I sense that they are uncertain I give them the opportunity to get out of the call by saying something like 'it sounds like it might be better for me to call later.

The point is that you need to allow for their trepidation in speaking to you. If it sounds like you're losing them don't try and fast talk them or other underhanded approach. Let them dictate the pace and context of the discussion.

Customer Research

The mistake I made when I first started calling was to call any names that seemed to fit our product. I even managed to set up meetings with people that did not need my product (very embarrassing). Sometimes the prospect throws you a bone and shares their time with you anyway, for a pity meeting.

What I found was the more I researched the prospect the less rejection I received. I realised that I had to make certain there was a reasonable likelihood that the prospect had need of my product. You won't always get this right as you cannot account for all the factors here. I found that the rejection I encountered was inversely proportionate to the amount of research and qualification I did on the prospect.

If you think about this it make complete sense but it something that does not seem to register in the mind of an inexperienced cold caller. It took many years for me to realise.

What To Do About It

To be able to give away control you need many prospects to fall back on. You need a prospecting list with at least around sixty prospective customer names on the list.

With a large enough list it does not matter if a few cannot speak to you now. You'll found a few that do and add some nice follow up calls to your CRM in the process.

To qualify your prospect correctly you need a good idea of what your ideal client profile is. You use the ideal client profile as a benchmark. Then you weigh up each prospect against how closely they resemble your ideal client.

If you put these two processes in to practice I can guarantee that you will receive less rejection when you cold call.

The more I work with people the more their feedback inspires my own cold calling. Please comment below and tell me what you think. You'll be helping me grow.

I find that I have knowledge to share with other sales professionals and sales leaders. I'd would very much like to chat to you about your sales issues and give you advice on how to overcome the most pressing in this time of crisis. Please reach out to me via the comments, a message or my website (www.prospectr.co.za).