One of my favorite quotes about sales comes from the (pre-lunatic) Oliver Stone movie Wall Street. Early on the main character Bud Fox asks his blue collar dad for another loan, to which he responds:
Carl Fox: “I don’t understand why you need money; you got a good job in sales.”
Bud Fox: “Dad, I’m not in sales.”
Carl Fox: “Son, you call people you don’t know and ask for money- that’s sales.”
While this statement may be an oversimplification of the profession, it nonetheless sums up a critical aspect of the sales process- cold calling.
Before you recoil in horror over the fact that I used a dirty word from real estate sales in the 50’s, let me define cold calling. I’m talking about contacting someone that you have never corresponded with to ascertain whether or not you could begin a sales process with them or their company. It could be a telephone call, email, text message, smoke signal, men’s room toe tap, whatever- the point is that have not previously been introduced to them by someone that you do know and you are going to have about three nanoseconds to convince them to pay any more attention to you. (I’m aware of “warming” a call, but that is just researching the person and the company before you contact them. If you just grab a list and start “smiling and dialing” then you are a moron and will not make it to your next sales gig anyway.)
I’ve no doubt insulted some of you and reminded the rest of you of the most uncomfortable aspect of your jobs, so let’s put away the hara-kiri blades and use the word “prospecting.” But whatever you call the process it is getting harder and harder to be successful in sales without spending at least some of your time searching for new business. Pick any sales training methodology or process you like-after they lump you into one of four groups based on your personality they all promote regular prospecting. When I was in sales (like I’m not anymore), I used to prospect early in the morning on as many non-Mondays as I could stomach. It kept my pipeline full and quarterly numbers consistent, and helped me resist my natural urge to go “all in” on one or two deals a year.
Jigsaw was founded with the data starved prospector in mind. Marketing is good intentioned, but their specialty is filling webinars with warm bodies. The data dinosaurs only provide high level company data with no specific contacts- which is great if you are pitching a product that gets decided upon by the temp that works at the main desk. There is no other free site on the web where you can look up current telephone numbers or emails of the executives that you need to reach for any companies other than schools and the federal government (hello 18- month sales cycle). Networking is an option, and the process has been made greatly more efficient online, but any good sales guy exhausts everyone they know in the first three months of their latest sales gig. Besides, who wants to take time from looking at pictures of their senior prom queen or playing Texas Hold ‘em on Facebook to refer salespeople…
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Couldn't agree more Garth. Typically sales people shy away from cold calling, but I'm not sure i know any truly successful sales people that can't and don't do it! By the way, I run an outsourced inside sales company... so my team spend all day every day cold calling prospects... we make, on average, over 1000 cold calls per day. We track many different metrics and for anyone out there who is planning on cold calling, here's some potentially useful information.
We use cold calls to arrange face to face meetings with prospects and we register the time during the day that we successfully book a meeting:
On average:
36% result from a cold call made between 8:30 & 11am
5% result from a cold call made between 11am & 2pm
24% result from a cold call made between 2pm & 4pm
35% result from a cold call made between 4pm & 6pm
Happy Selling!
Posted by: James Jarvis | March 01, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Hey James-
Interesting stuff. I preferred the morning, but I can see whay the late afternoon works, too.
I hope that 1000 calls is for the whole team :-)
Posted by: Garth | March 11, 2008 at 03:24 PM