by: Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.
A consipiracy exists in the world of selling. A cold calling conspiracy.
What I’m talking about is the requirement by most sales organizations to make cold calls on your time and at your expense. They say that cold calls equal appointments equal sales, but that’s not true anymore. All sales managers are guilty of teaching it, believing it, and using it. “Increase your activity and increase your income” are the mantra. We’re told to do the sales math to “motivate” ourselves. Have you heard this one? “If you make five hundred dollars commission per sale and it takes five appointments to get the sale and twenty calls to get an appointment, then each cold call is worth five dollars in your pocket.”
Did anyone ever really believe this?
Hey boss, put your money where your mouth is! If that were really true, companies would pay us the five dollars per call! They don’t because that equation never works in the real world... for anyone. The simple fact is that we are only paid for completed sales, not for attempts. Directing salespeople to make more calls and increase activity is a weak excuse for a sales manager or trainer to justify his or her job. Cold calling is an expensive waste of your time. The reason companies have you cold calling is because it is a waste of your time and your money, not theirs. You only make money when you sell something, yet over eighty percent of most salespeople’s time is spent looking for someone to sell to.
The bottom line is that we, as salespeople, cannot afford to continue fooling away our time on low-percentage activities like cold calling. It’s a way for companies to save money at your expense. We must focus our attention on activities that get real results in this new Information Age economy, and the effectiveness of cold calling fell dramatically when we left the old Industrial Age and entered this bold new era. Forget cold calling and learn how to market yourself intelligently, systematically, and automatically. Self-marketing is the key to success in today’s selling environment and the “secret” of all those top producers who obviously don’t cold call and won’t tell you what it is they’re doing to make those huge numbers every month. Remember, Napoleon Hill’s great work is entitled “Think and Grow Rich,” not “Work Harder and Stay Broke.” Don’t become a victim of the Cold Calling Conspiracy - learn to market yourself successfully and join the elite club of top producers. I did it and you can too.