How to Make Cold Calls Keep Motivated and Enjoy It
Learn how to make cold calls and enjoy it with this proven technique that keeps you motivated, focused, and successful, by learning from the objections and rejections that you get.
This technique has transformed the mindset of:
- Field Sales people
- Telesales teams
- and Appointment Setters
That all used to hate cold calling but are now focused, motivated, and succeeding.
On this page I'm sharing with you how they achieved that change.
Rejections and Objections
Take Their Toll
Like me, you probably get plenty of No's when you're making cold calls.
- No's can be early smoke-screen objections to end the call.
- Stubborn gatekeepers not putting you through.
- Excuses why the prospect can't take your call.
- Rejection part way through your call.
- And real objections when you try to close or gain commitment.
At some point the effect of all the No's starts to weigh you down.
Your confidence goes and your motivation levels take a nose dive.
Your results are consistently poor and this can cause stress.
You lose focus and look for ways to avoid making calls, such as the coffee machine, which makes your results worse.
This negative cycle continues until you either take action, change your job, or get fired.
If that sounds like you, or one of your team, let's look at how to make cold calls successfully by changing how you view the No’s...
How to Make Cold Calls and Enjoy It!
To learn how to make cold calls and enjoy it you first need to change your focus.
At the moment your whole focus when making calls is probably on getting a yes.
Getting a Yes is your objective, Yes to a sale, Yes to an appointment, or a Yes response to your telemarketing call. That's your objective and you should keep that Yes objective.
But if all your focus is on getting a Yes you have only two possible outcomes, a Yes or a No, which means a win or lose outcome. Your current viewpoint is probably that anything other than a Yes is a lose outcome.
Am I right?...
To make this technique work we are now going to change your focus. Your objective of getting a Yes obviously stays the same, that's what you want to achieve.
What I want you to change is what you focus on, what you count and record, and give yourself feedback on, and how you view your cold call outcomes.
The next stage will show you how...
Focus on the No and Re-frame Your Viewpoint
On your next cold calling session I want you to focus on getting 10 No’s.
I know that sounds crazy, but stick with it and you’ll see how to make cold calls and enjoy it...
First let me explain what counts as a No:
A No is when a decision maker refuses to listen to your sales pitch, or gives you a definite No to your proposal, after you have attempted to overcome all obstacles, smoke screens, and objections.
Arranging to call back, no answers, and not being able to speak to the decision maker do not count as NO’s.
Note the No Outcomes of Your calls
As you make your calls note the details of the No’s that you get.
Note at what stage of the call you get stopped, and the details of the objection or excuse the prospect gives you.
If you would like to use the same form that I use when training people how to make cold calls you can get it here: Call outcome Report...
Use the form to makes notes on each of the 10 No’s. You should write the reason it was a No, and at what stage the call was stopped.
For example, the objection came up at the Introduction Stage, or when you were asking questions.
Maybe it arose during the presentation of your proposal, or as you attempted to close.
As you try to reach your objective of a Yes on each call focus on the obstacles that get in your way. Try to overcome them by asking questions to get to the real reasons behind them.
At the end of each call, where the outcome was a No, you should be able to write down what really stopped you from getting a Yes and where it happened.
The Benefits of Learning How to Make Cold Calls using this Technique
When you’re focusing on getting the real reasons causing the No’s you stop stressing about getting Yes’s.
This on its own can make you relax more and make your calls better.
You also learn the real reason why your call was stopped because the technique encourages you to question the objections.
This will make improving your results really easy because by noting down the reasons behind the No’s you will build a sales training list of what you need to work on to get more Yes’s.
You can pinpoint the stages of your cold call script that will benefit from improvement as you will see what stage you are reaching before being stopped.
You will spot common objections and quickly be able to work on overcoming them.
For me the greatest benefit from this technique of Focusing on the No's is changing how you view your outcomes.
You will no longer see a Win or Lose outcome
Your viewpoint will change and you’ll see the outcome of each call as either a Win or a Learn. And the Learns can often be more valuable than the wins.
Your confidence will rise, your focus is now on getting real No's, and when you take the actions needed you will increase your results. And when you've achieved that you will have learned how to make cold calls and enjoy doing it.
Now to help you to interpret the call notes that you make, and to make the decions on what actions and training will turn No's into Yes's, take a look at these examples...
Interpreting the Results and
Taking Action
Focusing on the No's is the quickest way to learn how to make cold calls successfully.
The notes that you make about your No's will highlight what part of your call scripts you need to improve, and what sales training you will benefit from.
Here are some examples from my experience of interpreting the call notes made by the people I have managed and trained.
The first comment is about the calls. This is followed by the actions that were recommended to improve the calls. I’ve also added a link to pages of this website that gives sales training on those actions so you can see what training was given.
Call Notes: Early non-specific excuses made by prospects to end the call at the Introduction stage of the calls.
Recommended Actions: Re-write the Introduction Stage of the call and strengthen the Reason for Calling to grab the prospect’s attention and keep them listening. See training on creating a Cold Call Introduction...
Call Notes: Difficulty getting prospects to answer questions to qualify them as a potential customer. Objections arise after Introduction Stage as first question is asked.
Recommended Actions: Learn how to make cold calls with a motivator line in the script to link the Introduction Stage of the call to the Qualifying Questions Stage. See telemarketing tips on how to create a Motivator...
Call Notes: Prospects go off at a tangent, difficult to pin down, non specific objections and excuses come up regularly.
Recommended Actions: The call script being used isn’t working. Re-write the call script using clear stages and effective techniques. See the training course used to create an effective cold call script...
Call Notes: Specific objections raised at Presentation Stage of the call.
Recommended Actions: Work on objection handling skills. See section on Handling Cold Call Objections...
Call Notes: When trying to close and gain agreement the objection, ‘send me information' keeps coming up.
Recommended Actions: Look at the line being used to ask for agreement. Using the wrong line can cause the objection to happen. See specific training on Send me Information Objection...
To see a sales training course on cold caling to make appointments by telephone, that you can download now and start using today go to Sales Appointments...