Cold Calling Tip: Know Where You Are & Where You Want to Go

If you are in need of a good laugh read greeting cards. If you are in need of a new perspective on the ruts you get stuck in when cold calling, do the same.

There is a friend-to-friend greeting card that says, "Where ever you go, there you are."

Another one has a picture of a guy flailing his arms in the middle of a fast moving river. He cries out to the dog on the river's bank, "Lassie! Get help!" Open the card and you see a picture of Lassie belly up on a therapist's couch.

These cards both good object lessons for sales pros who cold call.

You can try the newest, most improved cold calling techniques only to find that you are still getting the same results you have always had. Because not matter where you go to try new cold calling techniques, there you are with your old habits.

Then when you "go for help" if you don't know what kind of help you need, you'll find yourself jumping from one "couch" to the next wondering why all of these "experts" are unable to give you the help you need to move forward.

A new client heard from his sales pros, "Leslie spent the first 25 minutes of our hour long consultation asking us about what we do. You (the sales director) could have done that then we could have spent the whole hour learning from her rather than just 35 minutes."

My response was this, "Fact is at this point in time your sales pros feedback is meaningless. The best they can do is to say whether or not they like what I have to say. Quite frankly it doesn't matter whether or not I am liked. What matters are the results.

At this point your sales pros do not have the critical thinking skills about cold calling needed to objectively evaluate what transpired during out coaching session. What doesn't even register as a blip on their radar screen is this ... they were unable to identify where they need help. It took 25 minutes of questions from me to drill down to the specific areas in which they need help.

At the end of the session I was clear about what we need to accomplish over the next six to nine months and could detail the road map about how to get there. At the end of the session all they could say is - this is good stuff. They have no idea where they are and how to get to where they want to go."

Sellers are often anxious to try the next new thing, to find the one best tip, only to find themselves buried under lots of new information and frustrated because of getting the same old results. So, what's missing?

The sales professionals have no clear inventory of where they are. Without knowing where you are you are unable to deal with the changes that are needed to move you to the next level of success.

Most people who sell have a vague sense that they would like their sales to be different in the future. But without a reality-based reference point of where-they-are in the cold calling process they are doomed to drift.

What you need to do is have clarity about where you are and where you want to go. Even a small degree of clarification will help you stay on track for improvements in your cold calling.

Without knowing where you are on the "map" of cold calling you will be clueless as to what adjustments you must make to stay on track to reach your goals of improving. You'll just pull over to the side of the road, try the next new best thing, and continue to wander about aimlessly. You will have no objective criteria by which to determine whether or not this-new-improved-cold-calling-technique will help or hinder your progress.

Consciously acknowledging where you are in your cold calling strategy is a challenge. But the acknowledgement of what is factually true will allow you to change your level of skill and change your results exponentially.

Visit: www.coldcallingexecutives.com

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