Why Cold Calling Doesn't Work Anymore
Author: Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.

Because I get such a volume of email from readers challenging the idea that cold calling is a waste of time, I decided to write an article addressing
those challenges and concerns.

One of the first things I always notice is that the particular attitude or belief of a person who defends cold calling is usually very predictable depending on
their current position, number of years spent in sales, track record during their career, etc. The most common ones are:

"Wow, somebody else gets it! It's nice to finally see the truth coming out in the mainstream media." - Successful salespeople in our new economy

"You know, I've always thought so myself. It seems like I bang my head against the wall cold calling but not much ever seems to come from it."
- The majority of salespeople nowadays

"Are you kidding me? That's just a lazy attitude. You've got to beat the streets, knock doors, pound the pavement, and dial for dollars every day, day in and day out, if you can possibly have any success in sales. There's no other way to do it." - The 'old timers,' most of whom are burned out

"We require our salespeople to make 50 cold calls per day. They must document this with call logs if it's on the phone or with business cards if they're going out in person."
- The vast majority of unsuccessful sales managers

The two distinct personality types who send in the most hate mail are the last two.

Part of the problem with a lot of very old ideas out there is that our world of selling is somewhat closed off from other areas of business that continue to
adopt and embrace newer, more efficient ideas. I was reminded of this recently while re-reading Seth Godin's "Permission Marketing." Here's a book that was intended for business owners and marketing executives, yet it provides a much-needed dose of common sense that would be of great benefit to sales organizations, and especially sales managers, who
continue to cling to very old, and in their minds, very right, ideas. Unfortunately, our brave new world has made some of these old, right ideas very, very wrong.

Seth Godin talks about Interruption Marketing versus Permission Marketing. Interruption Marketing is traditional advertising that interrupts your day in
an attempt to get your attention and sell you something. In other words, its the marketing equivalent of Cold Calling. Permission Marketing is systematically getting prospects to give you permission to present to them. In other words, its marketing's equivalent of what I teach salespeople to do. Because metaphors are such a great way of making a point, here's one
from his book. For our purposes here, I've taken the liberty of replacing the words Interruption Marketer with Cold Caller:

The Two Ways To Get Married:
The Cold Caller buys an extremely expensive suit. New
shoes. Fashionable accessories. Then, working with the
best database and marketing strategists, selects the
demographically ideal singles bar.
Walking into the singles bar, the Cold Caller marches
up to the nearest person and proposes marriage. If
turned down, the Cold Caller repeats this process on
every person in the bar.
If the Cold Caller comes up empty-handed after
spending the entire evening proposing, it is obvious
that the blame should be placed on the suit and the
shoes. The tailor is fired. The strategy expert who
picked the bar is fired. And the Cold Caller tries
again at a different singles bar.

Are you getting the point he tries to make in that story, and how it relates to us? Think about it. A salesperson spends hours, days, and weeks cold
calling with dismal results. The salesperson goes to the sales manager or corporate trainer for coaching and advice on what to do differently to start getting results. And what advice is ALWAYS given in these situations? You guessed it. A conversation ensues about what the salesperson is saying. A lot of overused, old, and very wrong ideas begin to surface. Things such as "Initial Benefit Statement," "Gatekeeper," "Elevator Speech," and other concepts that once upon a time were the right answers, but have since become very wrong answers. Working on these things is the equivalent of the man in the story blaming his failure on the suit, changing into a new suit, then going to a different singles bar to do it all over again. (How many of us have said "this building stinks," then cold called a different building and got the same results? I've done it plenty of times.)

With the business world in its present state, I really don't see how salespeople, managers, and organizations can afford to keep fooling away their time on old ideas that were once right but are now wrong and obsolete. It is this very feature of capitalism that is causing salespeople, managers and
organizations to fail in record numbers. What I'm talking about was first explained by Dr. Joseph A. Schumpeter, the former Austrian Minister of Finance and Harvard Business School professor. He stated that capitalism is "creative destruction." In other words, capitalism is a perpetual cycle of destroying old, less-efficient businesses and ideas and replacing them with new, more-efficient ones. This feature of capitalism is inevitable and unavoidable. It is the reason for the record number of bankruptcies we're
seeing today. People and companies are clinging to old, obsolete ideas and are being dragged down to failure by them. Yet they still won't let go. I
think the reason they can't let go is simply because it wasn't all that long ago that they really did have the right answers. Look at our current world of
rapidly advancing technology and how quickly those with college degrees in engineering or computer programming become obsolete. The problem is that what they learned in school has become outdated within a couple of years of their graduation. It reminds me of a story I once heard about Albert Einstein when he was a professor. One of his student assistants who was preparing for an incoming class said, "Professor Einstein, what test are we giving them?" To which Einstein replied, "The same test we gave them last week." Bewildered, the student assistant replied, "But Professor Einstein,
we already gave that test." Einstein simply said, "Yes, but the answers are different this week."

The bottom line is that the answers are different. The rules have changed. Time is running out for those who do not adapt to the new rules. As Napoleon Hill put it so well, "Whenever a nation, a business institution, or an individual ceases to change and settles into a rut of routine habits, some mysterious power enters and smashes the setup, breaks up the old habits, and lays the foundation for new and better habits."

If you're not achieving the sales success you desire, perhaps its time for you to lay the foundation for new and better habits.






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Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr. is the author of "Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In The Information Age." Please visit www.nevercoldcall.com for more information.

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