How To Put The Spring Thaw in Cold Calling

Very often I hear from new business and franchise owners that the idea of "Cold Calling" is intimidating. The idea of picking up the 50 pound weighted phone and calling someone, a business, out of the blue and trying to sell them is a major challenge. So much so that they ignore this opportunity to generate business for fear of failure. In the book of lists, speaking in front of people is ahead of death. I think Cold Calling probably deserves a place next to public speaking.

There are many great sales gurus out there who speak on the subject and they all say the same thing, "throw away the scripts". I agree that scripts can be 'a' problem but not necessarily 'the' problem. What scripts tend to do is create a persona and therefore do not allow you to be your natural self. This is then, in my mind, the solution; be yourself. If you start with a script then it should be in bullet form and only to provide you a cue to the concept that you want to convey. This idea is similar to the use of PowerPoint slides to trigger your discussion on the bullet shown on the screen in your public presentation.

I learned many years ago when I was trying to over come my fear of speaking in front of a group of people that if you know your topic and speak from your heart with passion then the people you are speaking to will connect with you and your topic. The same is true when you call someone on the phone.

In addition, don't call them to sell them something. This is telemarketing at it's worst and we in North America now have built up a barrier to these types of calls. Your call objective is not to sell but rather to get an appointment. This one mind set change might be enough to start reducing your fear of cold calling.

Secondly, stop calling it "Cold Calling". How about calling it "Prospecting". You are just like the gold miners who keep hammering steel stakes into their claim until they find the vein, the mother lode. You are only exploring, prospecting, for the next opportunity.

So the next time you are frozen with fear, bring in spring with a new way of thinking and let the thaw begin.