Chatting strangers

If you've been in and around selling for any length of time you've heard, and perhaps repeated several excuses for not cold calling: "It's hard!" "It doesn't work!" "Prospects hate it! "It's a time-waster!" 

"I'm better at closing deals than at opening them!" These rationalizations are foolish at best. Seasoned professionals know that cold calling is really easy and incredibly straightforward, it works beautifully, those who buy forget they bought via a cold call, it saves time, and opening chatting strangers deals is just as critical to sales success as closing them. But there may be another reason people hesitate to smile and dial, a deeper motivation that is getting in their way. They could simply be afraid to speak to strangers. My parents admonished me to "Never talk to strangers!" 

And, of course, they were doing us a favor at the time, but they were also sowing the seeds of timidity and aversion when it comes to sales practices. Where else, but through greeting and meeting strangers will we find our future sales and incomes? We can only up-sell, cross-sell and suggestively sell so much stuff to our existing clients, and while today's buyers, in theory should be able to give us unlimited referrals, they don't, for various reasons.