Sales Manager: Where are the numbers?
Sales Man: Sir, I am making 30 calls a day but not getting any appointment.
Sales Manager: You will never get appointment like this you should make at least 80-100 calls every day or pick-up your bag and go on the field do not come to office and if you have any respect for yourself promise to yourself you will not go home without selling something ... otherwise you are useless.
This is a typical conversation in most of the sales departments of the company. Cold calling was... sorry still is, the preferred method of generating new business for salespeople worldwide. Not for me. I really hate cold calling.
Where the ideas and innovation? As in all areas of life, ideas come and go.
Because something worked yesterday does not mean it's a good option today. The effectiveness of this traditional legend exercise has gone down more than fifteen years ago or more.
Still, there are sales managers and sales trainers keep insisting that a large part of money and education should include spending time making these dreaded calls. Instead of using more effective methods to meet qualified prospects.
When sales go down, there is a shout from the cubical "get on the phone and make more calls" or "you need to increase your activity or go".
Sales people are being mis-trained and mis-led by none other than so-called corporate trainers and sales managers. "Cold calling works and is the only way" has been so drilled into the minds that some still continue to do it in the traditional way.
I feel Cold calling is the least efficient way to find new business. Soon most of the sales people doing it get frustrated. How many sales people you know who likes cold calling? I know of none.
If you keep doing what you've always done, and the result is failure, you're going to become frustrated and worse...go broke.
Why Cold Calling Doesn't Work...Cold Calling Destroys Your Status as a Business Equal. Destroys attitudes. And it actually works against you.
Now how to generate leads... I strongly believe that everyone is creative and innovative; everyone can find their own way to generate leads, they will be at their best. It has always worked for me; just give space and ear to what they say.
Try this, brainstorm with your sales team “if the world is without phones, how you would generate leads”.
All the best for the new beginning.
2 comments:
Agreed cold calling doesnt work everywhr...Still would like to know some tips wat r d other wayz of geting clients.
I agree and disagree Rahul. "Cold Calling" as most people do it is a frustrating and pointless exercise. What a smart sales guy does is find a way to qualify the prospect before making that cold call or else figure out a method or modus operandi to doing cold calls where a large percentage end up translating into worthwhile meetings. I am saying this from the experience of seeing large number of sales people doing this on a daily basis and seeing that the same few guys end up having set up meetings and closing business even though they do roughly the same number of calls as the rest. However, these tend to be only a small percentage (10%) of the sales force. What needs to be done is to really identify these few people and have only them in 'inside sales' and move the top 10% of the rest to a more marketing or lead generational role. This in my opinion would mean a much smaller team - maybe 20% of what an organization would initially have had (10% to continue in inside sales and another 10% shifted to marketing / lead generation based sales) with all of those who remain being more enthused about their job and at the minimum the same sales performance if not better. I've posted a bit about this in a post on my blog - would welcome your thoughts on the same.
http://roshandsilva.blogspot.com/2005/10/gyanthe-science-of-sales.html
cheers,
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