Cold Calls can be Frustrating

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu says: “The general, unable to control his irritation, will launch his men to assault like swarming ants, with the result that one-third of his men are slain, while the town still remains untaken.”

You are saying how in the world does this apply to making cold calls?

Well, just as a general can get frustrated or irritated by a particular enemy and make bad decisions because of his irritation, so can a sales person. Remember one of our key traits of a sales person is patience.

So, just as the general gets frustrated and makes bad decisions (or gives up) so can a sales person who is running into problems dealing with a particular prospect or even a series of prospects.

You must avoid becoming frustrated and losing confidence in your sales plan and ability. How do you do this?

Perhaps you need to re-evaluate your current prospect list. Are you focusing on the right prospects for your product or service? For example, are you trying to sell hunting club memberships to a prospect target list made from PETA members? I know and extreme example, the point is how are you coming up with your prospects? Are you really targeting people who might eventually convert?

You should also take a look at your cold call script. Hopefully you are to the point where you aren’t reading directly from a script but you should still have one for reference to make sure you are covering all the points you need to make. If you are struggling with your current prospects but believe they are valid targets then maybe you need to reevaluate your sales points. Perhaps you are focusing on things that are not important to your prospects.

If you are selling website design services your prospects probably care more about what their website looks like, how it converts their customers or how much it will cost than they do where you are getting the pictures for the website from. Make sure your cold call script focuses on what is really important to your prospects.

Are you effectively handling the objections you are receiving from your prospect? As part of your cold call script you should have a list of potential objections and how you will deal with them. Early on in a new campaign or if you are targeting a new set of prospects you may only have a limited idea about the types of objections you will get. However, you should have no problem developing an effective objection list and how to deal with them.

Don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board and roll play to refine and improve both your cold call script and objection list.

Sometimes it just takes time to become successful even if you have the right prospect list, a good cold calling script and have an effective way to handle objections. Perhaps, the problem is simply you need more practice. If so, don’t worry, just keep making calls and you will both improve and gain confidence. As you improve your prospecting will become easier.

If all other issues are ruled out, then the problem must be in your presentation. Again, don’t worry. That is where practice comes in. Keep calling, keep prospecting.

Don’t give up. Don’t become frustrated, your prospects can tell if you are frustrated.