I, like most sales people, avoid talking about cold calling.

It is the ugly, nasty, important core of our business. We hate it (Or should we? More in a minute) and our prospects hate it (Can we fix that?). And I spend a ton of time writing about a million ways to make every call less of a cold call, like using Facebook and FriendFeed for sales leads.

Loving Cold Calling

But, I ran across this great little article from Sales Machine on BNET–Top Sales Pros Really Love Cold Calling. Guess what? He’s right!

I remember back in the day at Quicken Loans one of the highlights of motivating our sales teams was what we called Live Sales Events. These were simple…Sales Managers hoping on the phone with their teams listening in. Of course, the motivation was the competition to see whose manager performed the best on those cold calls.

One last point before we leave the example. Not only did the teams love it, so did the managers–that’s how they got there!

Why is Cold Calling Important?

Why does everyone avoid the topic of cold calling or act like it is something to be avoided? Because it is hard!

(Secret: And telling people things are hard doesn’t sell books or “Get Rich Quick” eBooks)

The number one failure I see in sales performance is phone anxiety. People are afraid of failure and cold calling (sales in general) is full of it.

Legend has it (I don’t know for sure) that one of Chris Gardner’s (The Pursuit of Happyness) tricks for success was to never cradle the phone. By never putting down the phone he was forced to dial one number after the other–never time for doubt to creep in. He learned to love cold calling. He learned how to pursue “happyness.”

How Do You Learn to Love Cold Calling?

I’m not sure you do. But, it is the key to success.

You can get better at attracting an audience. You can find better ways to target your message towards the right people. You can figure out more efficient ways to hit those right people with that message.

However, until you learn to love picking up the phone and making a connection with someone you will never be great in sales.

Do you love cold calling? Do you love helping people? Can you make people interested in hearing your voice?

Practice it.

Tell me how you do it…leave me a comment.

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