If you don't know how, then it's time to figure it out.

Aug 10, 2009 by mandeewidrick

If you’ve been following my recent tweets or Facebook status updates from throughout the past few days, by now I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’ve been spending endless hours studying cold-calling techniques. While I consider myself a confident sales person, I have oddly enough been finding myself hesitant to make calls to potentials clients lately. Why? is the question I kept asking. Was I afraid of encountering hang ups? Did I not want to hear the word “no”? I could not put a finger on it.

None of those things bother me too much, because I know it’s all part of life in sales. While there is always that “ugh” feeling when someone rejects me, it’s obviously not personal and it would be silly of me to take it as such.

After some serious deliberation, I finally determined that part of my problem was that I really didn’t know what I was going to say when I picked up the phone. I’ve made my share of calls to drum up new business, but I’ve always had some sort of connection with the potential client. When I had absolutely no connection whatsoever, well, I simply wouldn’t pick up the phone (and unfortunately, those names on my “need to call” list would eventually be erased from my wipe-off board).

It hit me last week that I couldn’t last very long with this way of thinking. If I didn’t know how to approach new sales leads, I needed to learn, and learn fast. So I hit up SwagBucks and Google, hoping and praying that someone out there on the internet had offered their secrets to selling print advertising over the phone.

I came across numerous resources, though most of them were trying to sell me on a training course of some sort without offering me any assistance. I did, however, find a free report from Wendy Weiss that was very helpful. (If you need any tips on cold calling, be sure to visit her website.) Wendy’s report, combined with several other notes I jotted down from various web pages, began to make me feel more confident in my ability to book meetings and sell to complete strangers.

That said, I have a list of leads I’ll be calling over the next few days. I’ll let you know how it goes.