“Cold Calling Is Fun!”

I read this today in a news article - I receive daily Google Alerts on my favorite - or most hated - topic, that of cold calling.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this. I’ve come across salespeople, albeit very few of them, who are able to delude themselves into believing that they like cold calling. They figure that since they have to do it (they’re wrong - they don’t) that they’ll make the most of it, and learn to enjoy it.

When it comes to real selling, that’s never the case, simply because the results aren’t there. You can make cold calls all day long, and even have a real feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day, but the fun comes to a screeching halt at the end of the month, when the sales and the commissions aren’t there.

The particular article I saw wasn’t about someone at a regular sales job, but rather someone who works for a group doing non-profit festivals and fairs. Not that it’s easier than a regular sales job - not at all - in fact it may be more difficult doing non-profit work; however, the difference lies in the fact that someone who isn’t working on commission doesn’t have to worry about paying the bills at the end of the month. The same salary comes in whether or not the cold calling works.

My experiences with the “cold calling is fun mentality” are as follows: 

1. The person secretly hates cold calling and keeps telling himself that it’s fun in order to make it more bearable.

2. The person is in total denial of the fact that cold calling doesn’t work and goes into a nearly drug-induced state of artifical euphoria in order to stay positive and forget about paying the bils.

3. Finally, the salesperson is new and hasn’t cold called long enough to have experienced its true misery.

No matter which way you look at it, the fact remains that there’s nothing “fun” about cold calling, and that it doesn’t work. Wake up to that reality and don’t delude yourself - begin implementing new and better ways to generate leads and watch your sales go up.