Summon the Courage to Cold Call - Do You Know?

Perhaps as a sales manager, you have received the excuses over and over again.

"I hate cold calling!" and "I shouldn't have to cold call!" and "Cold calling wastes my time!"

All of these are ruses.

What's really happening is the speakers are gripped with fear. They're afraid to fail, so sound foolish, and to even try.

In a word, they're COWARDS!

I've never said that before, but I believe it cuts to the heart of the matter.

And the only cure is COURAGE.

They have to make themselves cold call. It's not only essential to selling well, it's essential to their character development.

First, let's dash the notion that cold calling, selling to strangers, to people whom you haven't spoken to before, that this activity is fundamentally flawed.

Horse feathers!

Every healthy business grows by getting new customers.

The only way to make a stranger an acquaintance or a prospect is by meeting them. Chances are very good that they won't contact you. You must contact them, and what's more direct than reaching out by phone?

I've met people who contend that cold calling is the ONLY RELIABLE way of growing one's business. There are other ways, I suppose. You can grow through acquisitions, but if you go back far enough into those companies' histories, you'll find someone or many folks who courageously introduced themselves to strangers and built a business, as a result.

Be happy you're afraid! This means a lot of your competitors feel the same way and they won't cold call, leaving this medium only to the courageous, and potentially, only to you. With fewer people on the phones, prospects are called less, and this means they're less resistant to sales presentations.

The coward anticipates horrors, and the person with courage anticipates treasures. Don't believe self-appointed gurus who play to your fears, who say, "You're right; cold calling sucks." They're feeding your weakness, making it worse. Instead, seek out those that will literally, EN-COURAGE you.

Napoleon Hill, in the classic book, THINK & GROW RICH said it this way:

"Fear, the worst of all enemies, can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage."

Greater than the value of all of the sales in the world, the gift we give ourselves when we cold call is one of CHARACTER.