Cold Calling 101

When salespeople make cold calls, they face the difficult task of attempting to sell their products to customers who hadn't planned to be shopping. The process can be frustrating to people on both ends of the equation, from the person answering telemarketers' phone calls during dinner to the door-to-door salesman having another door slammed in his face.

Despite these challenges, there is a reason that cold calling has endured through the years - it works. Many companies assign the job to their newest sales hires, or outsource the work to specialty telemarketing firms to generate leads. Many successful sales professionals have a real knack for the work. They have shown there is a skill to the art of cold calling, and it takes more to succeed than simply developing a tough hide to endure the rejections.

The best cold callers show respect for their prospective customers, says Pat Cavanaugh, CEO of Cavanaugh Promotions who was profiled in Inc. Magazine. To build trust with a customer, you have to respect their time, he told the magazine. The system has helped Cavanaugh rise to owning one of the promotional industry's leading companies and to personally sell millions of dollars every year worth of branded clothes and trinkets. The products include embroidered shirts, personalized mouse pads, and company pens, watches and windbreakers.

In addition to running the company, he teaches every new employee his four best tips for making telephone sales. Sales representatives should keep the initial phone call short, make the customer laugh, don't ask for anything more than permission to "maybe" call again, and then finally call again to book a meeting in person.

Still, the master salesman makes his reps keep up a frantic schedule.

"When I do nothing but get on the phone, I can make 200 calls in a day," Cavanaugh told the magazine. But he makes sure he doesn't alienate customers by being too aggressive. "You don't have to shoot every time you have the ball. Sometimes a sale is not in the best interests of our company," he said.

Another way of finding success in cold calling is to match the company's product to a likely list of buyers. Most companies design their products to meet the demand of a certain type of customer, whether it's shin pads for youth soccer leagues, hearing aids for the elderly, or industrial products for manufacturing.

Many companies buy prospect lists or rent subscription lists from magazines and newspapers. The publishing company can screen its list of readers to find a specific slice of the population that matches the company's product line. Working with a prospect list can take the chill off a cold call and make qualifying leads somewhat easier.