Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men's Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and of course BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the...
Many sales professionals dread cold calling. And that dread, unfortunately, makes them ineffective when they pick up the phone to make the calls. If you're not careful, you can end up in a cycle, where your fear of cold calling creates more failure, making you hate it even...
It's been said repeatedly that B2B sales is all about relationships. However, relationships are difficult to forge when you're cold-calling people who don't know you from Adam. The best way to get into a customer account is through a personal referral. Please note that a...
My first post (now titled "Better Than Cold Calling") was setting up the ground rules for Referral Selling. Since that's a way to avoid cold calling which most sales pros dislike, so I gave the post a title that seemed like a catchy way...
In Monday's post, "Better Than Cold Calling" I went through some of the basic ideas about Referral Selling, based upon a conversation I recently had with Joanne Black, author of No More Cold Calling. She gave me a simple, five step process for asking for a personal referral....
Rather than a chore that's a bore, think of cold calling as a performance. And rather than a drone with a phone, think of yourself as a great musician or athlete, a star performer who must and can excel under pressure. Great performers, regardless of their...
If you're like most people, you've accidentally scooped up beliefs that help you fail. Change those beliefs, and you'll be more successful. The beliefs I'm talking about aren't specifically religious, but the arbitrary rules that you use to interpret the meaning of events. Often these beliefs can seem to...
I've been harping on lead generation because that's where sales pros need a lot of help. In fact, over 70 percent of sales leaders are not satisfied with their lead generation process, according to a survey of sales managers conducted by Jim Dickie, the head of the research and...
Hallucinations or not, rejections can still sting. And that's a good thing, because that pain represents a fabulous opportunity to improve your sales skills. Your challenge is to discover your personal threshold of pain and then take action to remove the sting. Here's how.Let's start by understand...
Let's start with the basics. The absolute suckiest task that sales folk must do is cold calling – trying to get a telephone meeting with somebody who doesn't know you from Adam. There are a lot of "tricks of the trade" when it comes to cold...
One of the comments on my previous post, “The Art of the Cold Call Pitch”, suggests that during the cold call you should “ask if it is a good time to talk” and only ask for an appointment if the answer is “No.” That’s a great idea --...
When you’re cold calling, you’ve got 10 seconds, at most, to convince the prospect that you’re worthy of attention. The quickest way to get the attention a prospect is to frame your opening sentence around a business issue that proverbially keeps the prospect awake at night. In my...
Now that you’ve got your prospect on the line, it’s time to pitch your product, right? Wrong. Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of a cold call isn’t to sell. The purpose, according to cold-calling trainer Andrea Sittig-Rolf, is to get the prospect to commit to meet with...
Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men's Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and of course BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the...
