Show notes
If you want to reduce or eliminate cold calls, you need to recognize that there are other, and very often more effective ways of doing this. More leveraged ways to be able to do this. More ways of being more focused, more specific...
David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to reduce or eliminate cold calls. Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Hey David, I'm so glad we're talking about this. I hate cold calls and who loves them? Right? I mean, if anybody comes on and says they love cold calls, wow.
I mean, maybe if you do it enough and it's successful enough, I can see how you would love them, but I'm not to that point yet.
David: I've always been skeptical of that too, Jay. I've always been skeptical of people who say, I love cold calls. But I know they exist. And I've had conversations with people like that, and they tell me why they love them and how great they are at them.
And when I hear that, I'm like, congratulations, that's awesome. I'm extremely happy for you.
I've never actually learned anything from them, though, that I could really share with other people that would get other people to change their minds. And so for that reason, I've never been one, at any of our trainings, to sort of teach cold calling.
Now, have we done it over the years? Absolutely. But it's not something that I feel like, oh, okay, I'm going to put together a course on cold calling because I feel that strongly about it. I don't.
I feel more strongly that there are other, better ways of getting recognized and getting noticed, and that's why nearly everything we do in our material is focused on allowing people to do that without necessarily making cold calls.
And it's not even really just cold calls. There are certain things that some people hate. Cold calls, posting on social media, engaging in paid advertising, different people hate different things.
Now, if you hate all of those things, if you're not going to do anything, then it's going to be more of a challenge to get clients.
But generally speaking, you don't have to do everything and it's very likely there are things that you don't like to do, that you won't have to do if you take the time to think things through and come up with a strategy that works better for you.
Jay: Yeah, and I think you made such a good point there. There may be somebody who loves cold calls, there may be somebody who's successful, but that's really like a character trait. That's like an individual skill set.
So if you think Oh, because this person can do it, then that means I can have five people doing it. I don't know if that's reality, finding five people who love cold calls and are successful at it.
And the other thing is that because there are so many other ways to contact people now, a cold call is very surprising to me.
It's like, if you didn't send me an email first, that's very strange in today's world. It's changed.
David: It really is. You touched on something and this is a bit of an aside from what we're talking about, but I think it's important, which is that there are some people who are wired to do things.
There are some people whose personalities are geared toward doing things extremely well. There's a sales trainer that I've known over the years. I met him in a number of trade shows. He's kind of a bigger than life character. He's tall and he's really good looking, very well spoken, very smart, makes excellent presentations.
And every time I've seen him, I thought, this guy is made for this. He is built for this. profession. But what I've also noticed is that not everybody's him, right?
Not everybody's as tall, not everybody's as good looking, right? Not everybody is, and the list goes on.
So I think for the rest of us, for those of us who just need to be able to generate clients, qualify them quickly, get them sold into our process, and keep things moving in our businesses, sometimes we have to come up with alternative things that will work for people who aren't sort of naturally wired to make them work.
Jay: Yeah, you need something that you can train to, that you can feel good that other people are doing. If you have other staff, right, if it's just you, and I know a lot of our viewers are, on their own, then you need to find things that you're good at, that play to your skill set.
You know, when I was in radio, I had a program director who felt that every single person should do exactly the same thing. And that always bothered me because we all had different interests. We all had different skill sets. If you put me in the lane of my passion and what I'm good at, then I'm very good in those situations.
But, if you keep trying to force me into areas that I don't like and I'm not very good at, I don't think that serves anybody.
And it's the same with cold calls or any other type of lead generation.
David: Yes, I agree completely. So to circle back to our topic, reducing or eliminating cold calls, and this is not for everyone.
Obviously, if you're doing them successfully, then you don't need to reduce or eliminate cold calls. But for those who feel like they do, there is absolutely hope. You can do this.
Now, if you've got a sales manager, or if you've got a boss who insists on a certain number of cold calls per day, and that's part of the job you're being paid for, well, then this might not apply to you either, because if they're not going to allow you the latitude to be able to generate leads differently, then this might not apply.
But for those of you who have the flexibility to test it out, one of the first things you need to ask yourself is this very question. How can I reduce or eliminate cold calls from what I'm doing now?
And the answer is that you're going to need to find an alternative. And very likely more than one alternative.
We talked about this a bit in the previous podcast. When you're looking at different methods of first contact with a prospect, there are a lot of different ways to do it. And if you're only focused on one, it means you're probably ignoring a hundred others that could potentially work for you.
So if you're in a situation now where most of what you're doing is cold calls, if you're basically on the phone doing analog kind of stuff, you're doing real-world, picking up the phone, making phone calls, not online sort of things, then you can look at what are some of the other offline sort of things that I could potentially do, that I am more comfortable with.
Whether it's attending a networking event, joining some sort of group where people get together to interact and network, something like that. You can look at that type of thing.
You can also look at some people actually prefer cold canvassing, going out and meeting people face to face. I tend to view that as very similar to cold calling, but it depends how you're wired.
There are some people who are very happy to get out and they like the fresh air and they like being out and meeting people and doing that. Now, that's also slower than cold calling, right?
Because you can get on and off the phone with 10 people in a very short period of time. It's harder to do that in person, but it is a different way of doing it. And when you're attending networking functions, well then you can get in front of a lot of people all at the same time.
If you're able to speak at a networking function, then you can have a lot of people get to know you very quickly, even though you're not necessarily getting to know them. But if you can gather business cards, you can get a lot of leads in a very small amount of time, if you're able to be positioned among a group of people as an expert on a particular topic.
I mean, these are just some examples. And then you get into all the online stuff, other ways of initiating first contact with a new prospect, whether it is a post that you make on social media, inside a group or on your own profile. If it's a conversation that you have with them in the DMs, there are different ways of doing it.
Some people will love those methods of communication, and some people will hate them. And the advantage of having a repertoire of different methods of reaching people is so important is that it allows you to get to people the way that they want to be gotten to.
Jay: Yeah, that's a great point. People prefer to be reached out to in different ways.
I also think it's important to note that just because you're cold calling doesn't mean that you're cold calling effectively, right? You need to constantly be reassessing, constantly be trying new things.
Cold calling is not such a difficult thing if you're regularly successful, right? That takes a lot of the pain out of things. But if you're using the same tired thing over and over again, it's going to become a slog for anybody. So how can you adjust your approach? How can you say different things, do different things?
Can you reach out to them with an email first? Okay, you know what can you do? In your case, can they send them promotional material first so they've seen your name first? There's a lot of ways to make cold calling not as cold, I guess, and more successful.
David: Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that in all of our work with our clients, we look at cold calling as one potential method of first contact.
Jay: Yeah.
David: In other words, it doesn't have to be the go-to., And as you mentioned, in the promotional products industry? In the print industry? It is almost ridiculous for someone in an industry like that to not lead with the very thing that they're offering.
Because if it actually works, if it's likely to work for your clients, if you truly believe that it's going to work for your clients, then why shouldn't you be doing that?
It's like the example of the shoemaker who has really bad shoes, right? If you're selling promotional items,