3. Don’t write checks you can’t cash
Sometimes it’s tempting to say what people want to hear, especially under pressure, but your time spent on the phone with a prospect might end up being useless if your relationship is built on faulty info.
4. Don’t eat while you’re on the phone
Face it, you can’t hide the fact that you’ve got a mouthful of granola bar from someone whose only connection to you is the audio device literally an inch away from your chompers.
This also falls under the category of multi-tasking, so you lose
double points
.
Cold calling
should never be so urgent that you need to talk on the phone while devouring your lunch. If you feel that there’s “no choice” but to call through your lunch break, time out! There may be a number of barriers preventing you from being engaged, having a positive outlook, and giving it your all.
Reassess these issues and remove some of the workplace stress before getting on the phones.
5. Don’t dominate the conversation
Let people be people, and more importantly, be a person yourself. You want your prospect to connect with you, and nobody wants to connect with an aggressive know-it-all.
Have the conversation at their pace, which means no cramming information down their throats. Even if your product is the most phenomenal thing that will ever happen to them, let them discover it naturally through conversation.
6. Don’t call without doing prospect research
Don’t pick up the phone before you
learn about the prospect
.
Are they a good fit? How many people do they manage? What exactly is their function within the company—are they the right person to talk to? Trying to ascertain all these things over a cold call is a great way to get hung up on.
“Hi, who am I talking to? OK cool and what’s your position? Can you transfer me to whoever is in charge of your IT stuff? Oh, that’s also you. Hello, are you still there?”
7. Don’t call without doing company research
How can you
help a business succeed
if you don’t know what they do or what their needs are? Spend a few minutes on their company website. Search
Google News
to see if they’ve recently won any awards or put out a press release. Take 60 seconds to go on LinkedIn and view the company’s employees. Match the target prospect’s stated location with the nearest headquarters to make sure you’re calling the right office.
Proving that you’ve done your research on the company during your first conversation will get you a lot farther than calling without a shred of information and asking to speak to “whoever makes IT decisions.” Don’t make the prospect do your job for you.
And if you’re really bored, please reply to this email and tell me what you would do with $500 million dollars. (The first thing I would do is take my car through the car wash
twice
.)
Take care,