by Elicia Flom

Created on: April 28, 2009

Cold calling customers presumes some or all of the following:

1. The customer you are calling has nothing at all to do and was hoping you, or someone else might call, maybe to offer a free lunch, or

2. The customer your are calling has done business with your company in the past but since you can't remember how long ago, the customer is "new" to you and you really should offer free lunch, or

3. You'd rather show your boss a list of names you've called then have nothing to show in the sales meeting at 4 p.m. today, or

4. You thought when the recruiter said "cold calling is a part of the job" that it meant you worked in an air conditioned office with a phone.

When the phone served as the primary communication tool among business people, sales people could make calls to customers based on listings from an ancient book, occasionally referred to as the "white pages" or "yellow pages," and better known as "the phone book." Sales people were assigned pages and used an old writing tool, the pencil, to painstakingly mark off each person called. The prepared script varied little from business to business and the target times to call "home customers" or "business customers" were well known.

Sophisticated software coupled with affordable yet powerful computers joined sales teams in business and company phone systems now incorporate a host of automated attendants, voice mail, "caller ID" and countless phone calling/receiving options. For larger organizations, computers drive the "front end" of the cold calling process. Computer systems, not humans, do the calling while sales people discuss sales strategies and tactics, okay, maybe just what they were going to do on the weekend with their commission check. When the computer calling system notifies the human that someone has actually, perhaps accidentally, answered the randomly dialed number, the human straps on his/her ear piece and starts the well-rehearsed script outlining the many benefits to purchasing today, preferably this instant!

In recent years, more and stricter government regulations have entered the sales cycle especially for small businesses. With services like the "Do Not Call Registry," the "traditional" cold calling model has been rendered obsolete. The days of reaching 2-3 people after calling several hundred, and having one of those people actually listen to the "sales pitch" are gone.

Today, sales people must use a variety of networking strategies through their associations, referrals from current customers, Internet social and "business to business" resources and targeted direct mail and print advertising campaigns to find new customers. Sales people should consider each customer a potential sales person. A foundation of satisfied customers increases the opportunity for future sales far better than calling random names from a list.

Cold calling was never an easy part of a sales person's job. Sales people must be resilient as well as organized and motivated to move through countless names to find a person to say "yes" or at least "just listen" to a cold call "pitch." With increasingly sophisticated computer and phone systems, sales people must adapt to new "lead generation" strategies supported by use of the phone; not necessarily starting with the phone.

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