by wade_watson » Thu Nov 06, 2008 3:56 pm
Oh, it works. Otherwise my phone wouldn't ring 8 times a day with solicitations. It's entirely a numbers game. You get the pitch down perfectly. You make, say, 25 calls and you make a sale (statistics are NEVER that consistent, of course). For most people, though, the constant rejection wears them down and their delivery quality tanks. It takes much more mental adjustment than most of us want to bother putting into it. When I was doing this (briefly many years ago) I'd see guys who could close 1 out of 3 calls when I was lucky to do 1 in 20. Some people have a natural talent for it, but not many.
The thing about cold calling is it's about the dumbest way to make a buck I know. With the Internet, and other means available these days, there's almost always a better way than cold. A little creativity can go a long way.
--Wade