Make Cold Calls More Successful – Stop Focusing on the Sale
by Ari Galper, Founder, Unlock The Game
All the sales gurus have been teaching for years that you must be enthusiastic and aggressive in cold calling tactics. You’ve been trained to focus on the sale and move cold calling conversations toward a sales conclusion.
What would you think if I told you to surrender your sales agenda entirely? The new sales mindset actually does just that. It brings cold calling out of the dark ages where you’re going into battle almost as soon as you dial the phone. It lets you get rid of “pitches” and “strategies” and “closing techniques.” And instead, you can become a real person again.
Defuse Tension and Start Communicating
Why does this new cold calling approach work so well? You see, when you’re not aggressive about making a sale, then others don’t tense up as soon as they hear your voice presenting a sales pitch that puts pressure on them.
Old traditional cold calling techniques try to coax people into buying something. I don’t know about you, but when I feel pressure, my immediate response is to resist. So it just makes sense that your prospects feel a similar resistance.
Whenever you make a cold call while holding a sales agenda in your mind, you’re triggering this resistance, no matter how low-key you try to present yourself.
Presumption Kills Trust
The key behind this new cold calling approach is to not to have any sales assumptions at all. Don’t assume that you can help this person with your product, because you don’t know their issues yet. You don’t know their budget or their needs in any way. When you’re not presuming anything, others feel that’s safe to talk with you in an open, honest way.
So if you don’t have “making the sale” as your goal in cold calling, then what replaces it? Well, your goal is really to overcome the other person’s fear of you and build trust. That’s the goal of the conversation, because you’re battling the negative stereotype held around most sales calls. You’re not battling anything else.
Enjoy Helping Others
The less focused on the sale you are, the more natural you can be. And the more you’re able to convey that you’re genuinely honest and are not calling to make a sale that would improve your gain, but to help the other person.
So the conversation is completely focused on the prospects’ world and the problems they may be looking to solve. If someone asks, “What are you selling?” the answer really
is, “Nothing. I’m not here to sell you anything because I don’t know if I can help you in any way. I’m only calling to find out if you have any issues tied to improving
the sales performance of your company.”
By adopting this approach, you’ll be able to enjoy your job again. For the first time, you’ll see other benefits to cold calling besides the actual idea of closing the sale. Once you begin to enjoy the idea of conversing and building trust with people, you’ll have a whole new frame of reference.
As the idea of making the sale becomes less important, you’ll feel more comfortable cold calling because you'll be helping people. So in a way, it’s almost like the sale itself is anticlimactic. We, as people, enjoy other people. As we help them, we get amazing feedback like, “Thank you for helping us with our solution.” And perhaps for the first time, you’ll find yourself really enjoying your work again.
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