The Street-Smart Salesman: How Growing Up Poor Helped Make Me Rich

Chapter 13

A Minute to Live: Cold Calling

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

—Harold Pinter

 

You may have been surprised to hear me say that salespeople, even above average salespeople, do not prospect often or creatively enough, but it's true. And it's true because salespeople are generally intimidated by the idea of having to talk to strangers. In this fear, salespeople are not unlike most people; they're just in a job that requires them to get over it! One of the most valuable assets a salesperson can have is the ability to acquire business in tough times. Cold calling is an essential skill when business is slow that also must be exploited when business is good.

People in need of approval from others regard the cold call, in and of itself, as an act of desperation and a harbinger of personal tragedy. And though there's a huge territory between making a cold call and being Willie Loman, you wouldn't know it by most reps' behavior. The prospect of making a cold call conjures a crushing self-doubt in many, too many, of them. The characters in Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross constitute a rogue's gallery of desperate, predatory dialers, stereotypes that tap deep-rooted suspicions about salespeople—perhaps most deeply among salespeople!

Because so many reps recoil from cold calling, entire salesforces lavish their attention on core customers with the reasonable expectation—in the hope—that their generosity will engender new business down the pike and that they ...