Cold calls really suck.
Most salespeople hate making cold calls and most prospects really hate getting cold calls. But what if cold calls didn’t have to be so terrible? Experienced sales and marketing consultant Dave Tester teaches the strategy for successful cold calls in his book Dialing Strangers: Overcoming Hangups and Producing Cold Calls That Sell.
Overcome Your Hang-Ups
The biggest hurdle to making cold calls is rejection. The sting of rejection can turn a confident salesperson into a mess of nerves and anxiety. It’s why so many people pick up the phone to make a call and think, “I hope I get their voicemail.”
Even the best cold call experts struggle with the sting of rejection. Just ask Dave Tester himself!
“My fears started in sixth grade when I asked a girl, Chanelle, out,” Tester admits. “I hung up the phone as soon as she said hello. Even today, when I pick up the phone, I think of Chanelle.”
But that fear of rejection hasn’t stopped Tester from having a long career as a director of sales and director of marketing. Learning how to deal with rejection can help you go a long way toward overcoming life’s biggest hurdles. Dialing Strangers gives your sales team the professional training they need to rise above their fears of rejection and drastically reduce the likelihood of being rejected in the first place.
‘But Cold Calls Don’t Work!’
If you do a little research on cold calling, you’ll see a terrifying claim thrown around, like this one from Ironpaper: “According to the Harvard Business Review, cold calling doesn’t work 90.9% of the time.” Blogs that insist cold calling doesn’t work like to cite this stat to support their stance against the practice. Our research team at Newsletter Pro decided to look into this claim and actually read the Harvard Business Review article believed to be cited in Ironpaper.
The article wasn’t about cold calls at all. It was about the 8 different types of salespeople you’ll see on a sales team. In fact, Ironpaper’s claim about cold calls misrepresents the data presented in the article. While Harvard Business Review does state, “Only 9.1% of sales meetings result in a sale,” it’s a big — not to mention erroneous — leap to claim over 90% of cold calls fail.
If it feels like 90.9% of your cold calls aren’t working, it probably has something to do with the strategy of your sales team. The sales techniques in Dialing Strangers can make a big difference by teaching your sales team how to consistently close more appointments and business than your competition. These techniques include:
- Eliminating common problems that lead to rejection
- Presenting yourself in a way that makes customers feel like you’re saving them time rather than wasting it
- Learning to spot and work with different personality types over the phone
Be A Cold Call Superstar!
Why are we so confident in Dave Tester and Dialing Strangers? Because this isn’t just another book on Newsletter Pro’s bookshelf — we regularly bring Dave Tester to our office to educate our team on the art of phone calls. We’ve seen incredible results from his techniques, and we know he can help your team too. Dialing Strangers: Overcoming Hangups and Producing Cold Calls That Sell has everything you wish you knew about cold calling back when you made your very first call. Talking to strangers doesn’t have to be a hassle. With this concise guide, you’ll eliminate your hang-ups and have your potential customers at “hello.”
