Your boss hates when people cold call him, yet he requires you to make cold calls every day. Here’s what you do:
Jeffrey Gitomer Answers A Question On Cold Calling | Real World Sales Wisdom
January 8, 2013 by 2 Comments
Hire Jeffrey
Don't let your next
sales meeting suck!
Hire Jeffrey to speak at your next corporate event.
Jeffrey`s iPhone App
Jeffrey Gitomer’s Books
Complete Your Collection!
The Sale Re-defined |
Win Now |
The Little Book of Leadership |
The Social BOOM! |
The Little Red Book of Selling |
The Sales Bible |
Little Teal Book of Trust |
Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude |
Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching! |
Little Red Book of Sales Answers |
Little Black Book of Connections |
Little Green Book of Getting Your Way |
Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless |
In the interest of full disclosure I have spent the last twenty plus years in the outbound (what used to be called “cold calling”) business. Jeffrey, you are right that sales reps should not cold call. They don’t like to do it and they are no good at it. Marketing should not cold call. They don’t like to do it and they are no good at it. If fact, nobody should be cold calling. Having said that, nobody should be calling customers and depending on referrals to earn a living and meet their quota. Nobody should be sitting around waiting for inbound responses, hoping that enough of them come in to meet quota. As with anything else in the world, there has to be a balance. If you are the CEO or Sr. VP of Sales & Marketing for your company, I strongly recommend that you do not wait for your top 20% prospects to reach out to you. If you do it is most likely that they won’t reach out to you. They may never find you, or they may never score enough points in your marketing automation system (the human equivalent of a pinball machine) and they have more than likely are already in the “win” column for a more nimble vendor/partner. Best case you will receive an RFP that has already won by that competitor. If you are all in on referrals and/or inbound marketing (there is an epidemic of “inbounditus” right now), the chances are you are going to be out of larger, more strategic and more profitable deals. Balance, Jeffrey… balance!
I never thought the day would come that the author of the “Sales Bible” Jeffrey Gitomer would say that Cold calls are ineffective. Sad Day. You have been a leader in my life in the sales world and have truly let me down. I sell computer software and I understand that no one likes a cold call, which is why we as sales people have to set ourselves apart from all the rest. I completely disagree with what was taught in this blog. I make sales via cold calling everyday. It is part of my regular income. Obviously it’s not an ideal gate to a sales lead, but still wow……talk about betrayal.