The Dreaded "Cold Call" and Having a Reason to Call

As sales people, whether green or seasoned, selling paper or airplanes (or paper airplanes), a basic yet important part of our world is the cold call.

For starters, I'd like to point out that I am of the opinion that in this day of an almost infinite amount of information available at our fingertips through a variety of websites, there is really no such thing anymore as the true "cold call." To the person on the other end of the line it may seem like a cold call, but anyone picking up a phone should first be spending 15-20 minutes using resources like LinkedIn, Facebook, personal and business websites and any relevant information a basic Google search may yield (to name a few).

Some of these sites will actually allow you to adjust filters and conduct queries focused on areas of mutual interest. For example, an area of personal interest may be golf. You can conduct a search on LinkedIn to show users in (or outside) your immediate network that have golf as a similar interest/hobby. A great search here would be to show anyone that may have attended or graduated from a school or university you went to. This is an immediate means of creating rapport with a prospect.

They may not know why you're calling immediately, but having some common denominators will certainly make rapport building a less challenging task.

Building on our previous examples of researching similarities, it's important to point out that unless we have a compelling reason to call in the first place, it doesn't matter if we have an infinite number of similar interests. Without a compelling reason, you ultimately end up wasting not only your time, but your prospect's time as well.