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If you love cold calling you might want to stop reading this post now and keep dialling.
Many industries rely on picking up the phone. The old timers tell you this is the way you earn your stripes. And cold calling works. If you dial enough you will get appointments, leads and sales. And if you enjoy the feeling of dread, a nervous stomach, dry mouth and putting on a chipper voice I guess it can be fun too.. The numbers don’t lie. Sales expert Mahan Khalsa shares the stats:
Cold calling results in about a 1-3% success rate for getting an initial appointment and it’s generally abusive to both parties.
If you call 1000 people you will get 30 appointments. The quality of those appointments is another question. Cold calling is also generally done by the highest paid people in the business. There’s a key reason for this ratio. At any one time less than 3% of people are actually in the market and actively looking for or considering a solution. 97% of people aren’t in the market right now. But they could be tomorrow, next week or next month. If you call those people today they won’t be interested and you won’t call them again for weeks or months. In the meantime they’ve come into the market and bought from someone else. Inbound lead systems capture everybody. The 3% who are ready can put their hand up and engage with you and the 97% can be educated at their own pace. By the time they’ve put their hand up they are informed, motivated customers and know they’re talking to an authority. No strong arming required. |
