Cold Calls Today Can Warm Up Sales in the Future

Cold calls are a type of sales approach that most salespeople dread and which they postpone doing until the boss says, "Where are the sales?"

When the regular sales contacts have all been approached, the list of long shots is brought out and called or dropped in on.  "I was just in the neighborhood...."

In person or on the phone, the cold call begins.

You have to introduce yourself.

The listener may immediately shut down.

You have to snag some buyer interest because at the heart of what makes a sales call cold is that the buyer does not have a ready or present interest in the product you are selling.

Quick gambits might work.  Emotional appeals might work.  There is one approach that works more often than any other:  straightforward presentation of why you are either calling on the phone or standing in front of a person who has a list of work to do as long as yours.

Years ago I witnessed a young man who sold an item more unpopular than prepackaged funerals.  He sold office forms.

Forms are not discussed much in the workplace, but they come from somewhere if they are not generated in-house.

This young man visited my boss once a month, month after month, for two years.  Each month I heard my boss say, "I don't need any forms."  After the polite young man left quite politely, taking the firm no for what it was, my boss would turn to me and say,  "We have a backlog of forms, but if I ever do need forms, I'll buy them from him."

Through the years I, too, would have my version of a form to pitch to people who didn't want what I was selling.

In an economy that has dried up in some quarters there isn't as much time to spend building a reputation for reliability that might ultimately convert a series of cold calls into, finally, a sale.

But the message of that memorable encounter remains:  polite persistence is a key to turning a cold call into a sale.

In person or on the phone, the cold call won't stay cold forever if the sales representative relays the benefits of the product being sold.  Some of those benefits can't be communicated quickly in a cold call that gets shut down fast.  But the professionalism of the salesperson can be communicated and will be communicated by the way you make your cold call.  You may not sell the product that day; but, you can sell the benefits of one day working with someone who has communicated powerfully that he/she doesn't give up and knows how to respond to the word "no."   With a smile and a nod and a gentle promise of "I'll be back."

Make a cold call truthful, fast and respectful of the other person's time.  You might not make the sale that day--but you will have increased your chances of succeeding in the future. 

We all resist doing work that doesn't hold the promise of succeeding.  You can change your attitude about cold calls by taking a fresh look at what they really are:  sowing seeds of preparation that can turn a future cold call into a sale.

Rethinking Conventional Wisdom

"One of the laws of our household growing up was to never eat fish and drink milk at the same time," my friend confessed, while eating fish and not drinking milk.  She shook her head as she puzzled over whethere there was any harm in that culinary combination.

 I knew what she was feeling:  we grow up with what we consider conventional wisdom, and then later in life, we wonder if it was ever true, or if its purpose was outgrown.

Most of us live with that tension daily and often in the workplace.

We have a set of ideas that we think are true: 

Don't make personal phone calls at work.

Don't surf the web on company time.

Don't discuss your personal life with coworkers.  While companies claim to be "like a family,"  unless you are in the Mafia, they aren't, really.

Don't put anything in an e-mail you don't want the boss to know because he/she has a right to read your emails.  (Yes, rumor has it that there are people at some companies whose job it is to run routine screens on search strings inside employee e-mails to find out who's up to no good.)

Those make a kind of head-nodding sense to us.

But other mandates passed along in the same way that we ask "Where's a good place to have lunch?" don't always mesh with our sense of conventional wisdom.

Sometimes I still think e-mails are too casual for certain types of tasks.

I don't think saying you're sorry means that you're weak.

And I don't think you can be too courteous in an age when speed drives us, and speed is often at war with the pace of courtesy.

One of the ways that many people underestimate why being polite matters is that they don't know how they sound on the telephone, one of the chief ways that we communicate at work.

Often people forget to identify themselves, mistakenly believing that their voice will be immediately recognized.

They call and don't ask if they are calling at a convenient time.

They speak too fast or too slowly, and sometimes sneeze into the receiver.

If you haven't heard how you sound on the telephone in a while, listen to your telephone message on your voice mail.  Has it been a while since you changed that message?

If you can't remember when, it's time to change it.   There's no conventional wisdom to back me up on this, but I know that other people have been calling you and leaving you messages. They may even parrot your message as they hear it, while yawning.  They are most likely tired of the same old message which imparts the idea that you are growing older and more tired too.  Doesn't it?

Sometimes the heart of courtesy is to rethink how you sound to others, and if the ways that you leave behind a message of yourself sound tired, it's time to change the message.

Courtesy existing in an age of speed isn't the same unappetizing combination as fish with a glass of milk, but it your first response to this unction was that you don't have time to change your phone message right now, then most likely, you really, really need to change it.

Add Titles to Your Attachments

When you let the first word of your attached document also serve as the title of it (that's the default title when you don't add one), you signal to your reader that you don't pay attention to details.

If your job is to pay attention to details, this message of inattention costs you credibility.
If your job doesn't require that you pay attention to details, what kind of job is it?

In addition to telegraphing to your reader that you understand the power of adding a title to an attachment when you add one, you simplify the reader's task of managing files that often are linked to e-mails and e-documents.

File management, like information management, must become a habit--almost a reflex, or you can spend a good amount of your time playing find and seek and seek again.

Unlike your car keys, which we all expect to misplace, missing documents are more important because they affect more than just you--the driver of the car.

Information in e-files, e-mails and e-documents serve more than just you, most likely.

If you are in the business of sending files as attachments, give them a relevant title to make managing them as simple as a good habit that one not only starts but maintains, like reliable, accessible files.

Cover Notes for Attachments Should Quicken Interest in Your Reader

One-line cover notes like "Here's my resume" or "Here's a photo I thought you might like" are lame cover notes at best. They have no more significance than a grocery list does after the items on it have been bought.  You throw it away.

The cover note has far more potential than a grocery list.

Your cover note has the power to intrigue the reader to open your document and interpret the message in the way you intend it.  
Cover notes with a sales hook--a reason to open the attachment--demonstrate the kind of energy that employers are looking for: active employees, not passive ones.  Passive cover notes tell readers that you will be a passive employee.
Finally, you can also leave a memorable idea behind that the reader now associates with your name.  The result is the difference between being memorable or forgettable. Which one do you need to be?

For example, when sending a resume, you could write:  Here's the resume you are expecting from me.  After serving in Afghanistan, I am eager to see how my leadership skills can help your company meet the challenges of these trying economic times.

If your work history is less dramatic, you can simply write:  Here's the resume you are expecting.  Thank you for reading it and for considering me as an applicant for the junior executive position.  I am eager to put my college-education to work for you. 

There are as many ways to write a memorable cover note as there are people to send them--people who need to be remembered in a positive way or find jobs.

If you are sending limp, lame, lazy-looking cover notes that have very little content, it's time to think:  what does a cover note have in common with a grocery list?

The answer:  not much.  Unless you are writing it as if what you write is an item on your to-do list and you--and next, your reader--will soon mark through it, or in the case of e-mail, simply hit the delete button.

Making a Successful Routine Request

Maybe you're used to yelling at the dinner table, "More meat!"  Maybe someone brings you more meat. 
Maybe you think that's the way to ask for something in the workplace too.

It is not.

Just as you would not yell "More meat" at the waiter in a restaurant, you should not holler versions of what you want in person or through emails in the workplace for help or for folders or any kind of information that you need.

Perhaps you have been doing this unwitttingly, and you have been getting what you asked for.
That's because people want you to go away, and that's the quickest way to make sure you leave.

Chewing on your hunk of meat, you walk off not realizing that people wonder which cave you live in and if you would enjoy the perks of civilization, like indoor plumbing and a stove.  When you behave like a cave dweller, you don't leave a very positive impression behind.

It's hard to know if you have been living in a cave. (Plato explains this in his book The Republic.)

But if you don't want to read Plato, consider this question:  Have you been demanding what you want the way a baby does who cries for a bottle until someone puts the bottle in his/her mouth?

If so, stop.  Learn to use words to communicate what you want, and these words should be laced with "Would you mind?" and "Is it possible" or "Would it be convenient?"   You see?  Words of courtesy and respect can do what demands and yelling have previously accomplished, only there's a greater benefit.

People will have a greater respect for you in the workplace and be glad to hear from you again.

Making routine requests is part of any workplace routine.  Don't fall into the bad habit of routinely hollering or demanding.  Instead, make your routine requests special:  be polite and considerate.  When you are, second helpings of help will follow.  When they do, say the same words you said after the first help was given and received, "Thank you."

When Opportunity Knocks, Answer the Door

Like everyone I receive many attachments without an explanation.  They show up in my e-box with no accompanying note of explanation.  When that happens (and it frequently happens with business people) I always think:  'You're missing an opportunity to make a sale.'

Maybe you think you're aren't selling something, but I think most e-mails sell something in the workplace:  credibility is one.  Establishing and building your credibility translates into your being memorable and easy to work with.  When people don't find your documents/correspondence confusing, they may not say, "Well done!" but they do register that inner exhale of:  'That was easy.'   That's especially important if you are always thinking ahead to how you can earn your next promotion or your next raise.  Don't let people forget you, and they will be more likely to if you don't provide a cover note that explains the attachments you are sending along.

Here are five good reasons to add a cover note to any document you forward whether through e-mail or snail mail:

1.  It's polite.
2.  Your reader will be more likely to open it.  Many people don't open attachments if they don't recognize the name of the sender, and sometimes people don't remember names.
3.  You help orient the reader to what he/she is about to open.  It could sound like this:  Here's that report you asked for...... Not only do you help orient the reader, you help steer the reader to interpret the contents of your attachment in the way you want it to be understood.
4.   You can offer to answer any questions that might arise after your reader has opened and read the document.
5.  You could express gratitude for the reader being interested in reading your attachment, especially if it is a resume or a proposal for a change at work.  This single sentence can open the door for you to follow up on this e-mail.  Sometimes you need to follow up:  to remind them of who you are and that you will do what you say you will do.

Following through goes a long way in the workplace.  A good example of this is simply writing a cover note that explains the purpose for the attachment being sent.  When you have a blank screen in front of you, recognize it for what it is:  an opportunity to remind the reader that you are a hard working person who is polite and respects others' needs to know and fulfills them by providing useful information in a timely way.

Shake That Thing! 5 Ways to Sharpen Your Professional Writing This Year

Pay attention to how often you use the word "thing" to refer to the subject you mean.  Like the word love, for which there are a variety of feelings, the word thing is considered an all-purpose word, but sometimes it doesn't serve its purpose.

The thing is, words are symbols, and the word you use creates a link between your brain and the reader's brain.  The more precise the word choice, the stronger the link of understanding will be between the writer and the reader.  Recall how often you check your bars for the strength of a WiFi connection or how much power you have left on your cell phone.  Now, imagine that the word "thing" is the last bar, the faintest hint of power.  That's the power of the word thing when you are communicating.

Don't take my word for it.  The next time you write anything, double check your use of the word thing, and then consider which noun you really need to express the clearest idea possible.  You don't have to swap out every thing--just the ones where you mean the kitchen sink rather than that thing that has two faucets, or the traffic light rather than that thing that hangs over the road that controls traffic flow, and that thing between your two ears that thinks about the power of language.

If you are not a big user of thing, take a second look at the four other most common words that people rely casually upon to communicate and which are worn out from overuse:  do, it, seems and awesome.

When you confront those words, you will also feel the nagging discomfort of not wanting to sound snooty or out of step with other people who use the same language and in the use, help each other to feel part of the crowd.

Here's the question for you.  Are you part of the crowd or do you want to stand out as a stronger communicator who sets a higher standard for clear and persuasive communication?  Then, be willing to be uncomfortable by sounding sharper than your friends and by showing progress in the craftsmanship of writing even if that progress means that you have to give up your longtime lament of   "The thing is--I've never been a good writer."  Good writing begins with a desire to become a better communicator because you understand the power of that position.  A growing self awareness that produces a more controlled use of vocabulary is one step to take to reach that goal.  When you make that choice, your workplace writing will improve and, most likely, your earnings will as well.