COLD POPPING

By Hank Trisler

"Oh, no. He's not going to talk about that, is he?" you might well ask.

Yes I am. I'm going to talk about calling someone you have never met before and asking them to buy something from you. Call up and blind-side ‘em. Scare hell out of ‘em. It seems only fair. They've been calling you at work for years and asking hard questions to which you don't know the answers. You didn't even know they were going to call. Now it's your turn.

"Why, in the blue-eyed world, would I want to do that?" you say.

There are two primary reasons: 1) You might make an extra buck and 2) for practice.

Today, in your town, there is a guy who just found out he's getting transferred. Yesterday he didn't want to sell his home, but today he's highly motivated.

Today, in your town, there's a woman who just rolled her car into a ball of foil. Yesterday she had no interest in a new car. Today a new car is at the top of her list.

Today, in your town, there's a couple who just found out the rabbit passed on. Today they are in need of an insurance update.

Today, at least in my town, there are a couple of dudes in a faceless tilt-up building who just got funding for the "next big thing." They are hot prospects for your components, test equipment, assembly shop or ad agency.

The human condition changes from minute to minute. People are good buyers for your product/service who didn't exist, as such, yesterday. Some of them will call you, seeking your assistance, but the vast majority will not. They will call your competitors or simply suffer along without you until someone else picks them up.

Only by a well-planned, consistent program of cold canvassing can you hope to reach these people before they mature into full-blown buyers and you have to compete for them in the open market.

Here's the downside to this song: my informal surveys show that only about six in every one hundred calls you make will result in a qualified appointment. That's an awful lot of effort for a comparatively small result, so there must be some other reason to justify your time investment. That reason is practice. Cold calls provide badly needed practice for salespeople, new and experienced. They get and keep you sharp, keep the adrenaline flowing. You can't get ready for a cold call, as you have absolutely no idea what the person on the other end of the line will say. He doesn't know what he's going to say, as he didn't know there was going to be a conversation. A script will do nothing for you, except brand you as another sales pest. You're on your own and living only by your wits. This sharpens you, both on the phone and in person.

The very best thing about practicing with cold calls is that you can't screw anything up. You didn't have anything going in, so you can't lose. With a qualified prospect you make an investment of time, so you can actually lose a deal and that time. With a cold call, you can't lose a thing.

Why don't we make cold calls?

We try to make too many. When I was a young man I went to a sales seminar and the fellow running the program said that, in order to be any good on the phone, you had to make fifty calls a day, until you die. Death, for me, took less than three days.

Fifty a day is way too many. You burn out, you lose enthusiasm, you sound and feel mechanical.

Try one an hour, for openers. Is one an hour enough to do any good for you? Run the numbers. If you make eight calls a day, five days a week, four weeks a month, you will have made a minimum of ONE HUNDRED SIXTY calls at the end of the month. Can you honestly tell me that talking to one hundred sixty new people a month won't make you money and make you a better communicator? I think not.

Another reason we don't make cold calls is we don't know what to say.

Fortunately for you, I know what to say. I went to a seminar and the fellow running the program told me you need a canned pitch. He said you have to have your statement clearly written and say it fast, without breathing, so the prospect won't hang up on you.

I learned my lines flawlessly, but the customers kept forgetting theirs. The faster I talked, the quicker they hung up. Then I noticed a strange phenomenon: A customer never hung up when they were talking. They only hung up when I was talking. The challenge became clear: Keep the customer talking at all costs.

Our customers have been trained not to talk to strangers calling them on the telephone, so they need to be re-trained. We need to hit them with a high-structured question that will jolt them into talking. A question such as:

"Have you sold your home yet?"

"Have you bought your new truck yet?"

"Have leased your office space yet?"

"What microprocessor have you designed in for your new doogers?"

"Have you booked a keynote speaker for your sales conference yet?" (Yes, we all need to cold pop.)

Here's the real beauty to opening a cold call with a high-structured question: You can't get ready for them with a canned pitch, because you have absolutely no idea what they're going to say. You have to play the cards that are dealt you and that makes you sharp.

They might well say, "I have absolutely no intention of selling my home." In that case, the next word you say is critical. It is, "Goodbye." That's right, dump him. You have fulfilled the two primary objectives of a cold call: 1) You reached the person you were trying to reach, and 2) you found out they are not interested in what you have to sell. Dump him and go look for someone else who does want to buy what you're selling. Why waste time and energy on a person who has told you out front that he is not a buyer? Dial another number. Not every person you reach will be disinterested.

Which then brings us a whole ‘nother set of problems. She may say, "We don't plan to sell our home until school is out." What do you say then? I don't know. I'm not making the call. Maybe you'll want to go for an appointment. Maybe you'll try to get some more information. Maybe you'll try to endear yourself (a tough proposition over the phone). All I know is the ball is now in your court and the only way to get it back over the net is to ask a question, and it had better be a good one. Rely on your wits and be comforted by the fact that those wits will get sharper with every call you make.

When I was first in real estate, and making a lot of cold calls to survive, there was one question I was frequently asked that always threw me: "Who told you to call me?" That stopped me. I'd sit there, gasping into the phone, "Errr, ummm, ahhh. . ." and suffering. I wanted to be open, honest and truthful with them, but somehow thought, "I was cold-popping through the book and just hit on you," lacked a certain elan. My friend, Cliff Brown, and I developed a method for dealing with this issue. We called it "Creative Truth."

Cliff was a new insurance salesman and we belonged to a "Brainstormer's Club," which met once a month for breakfast, lead exchange and mutual support. At the end of every meeting, I'd tell Cliff, "Here is your assignment for this month. I want you to talk with 100 people you don't know and ask them if they would like to have their estates updated."

He'd say, "Good, and I want you to talk to 100 people you don't know and ask them if they want to buy or sell real estate. And we'd shake on it to seal the deal.

Then, when someone would say, "Who told you to call me?" I'd say, "Cliff Brown" and it was true because we made it true.

Cold popping will make you creative, quick and resourceful. It actually gets to be fun, once you discover that no matter what the person on the other end of the line may be feeling, he can't get his hands on you. His problem is his problem, unless you choose to accept it. If you don't like the way the conversation is going, if you can't think of what to say, if you're suffering, hang up. Staying on the phone after brain function has shut down will only make you feel worse. Hang up and dial another number. You are in complete control.

You may have noticed that I didn't give my name or company before asking the initial high-structured question. That's because if I get the wrong answer, it doesn't really matter who I am, ‘cause I'm fixing to hang up.

If you are concerned about the apparent rudeness of hanging up on people, bear in mind that it is only rude to hang up if the other party knows you hung up. The key is to hang up in such a fashion that the other party doesn't know you did and the way to do that is hang up while you're talking. As we discussed before, nobody would do that, so the customer is sure you didn't.

After you've hung up, you know you'll think of thirty-three things you could have said, would have said, should have said. That always happens. If you like, call him back and say, "As I was saying when we were disconnected. . ."

Cold popping is absolutely without physical risk, yet many of us still avoid it because we fear rejection.

That's just silly because rejection is a chosen response. He can't reject you without your acceptance of his rejection. His opinion of you is none of your business.

I understood this intellectually, but never actually felt it viscerally until I worked for Bob Potter. It was in Seattle, the year they had the World's Fair and Bob was the General Agent for The Green Shield Life Assurance Company, of Boulder, Colorado. We were selling funeral policies as investments, a sort of fun business. Bob called them "Charter Policies," for reasons still obscure to me.

One morning we were having a sales meeting in his office, which was good, as it was the only office we had. There were about a dozen guys sitting around Bob's big, "T" shaped desk. The president of the company and vice-president, sales, were out from Boulder to pump us all full of smoke and make us go out and sell. The phone rang and Bob answered it, which was good, as he was wonderful on the phone and we always learned something from him. It was also good because we didn't have a secretary. Bob always answered the phone.

Bob had the first telephone amplifier I had ever seen; two big boxes sitting on his desk that made him sound like he was sitting in a barrel. Some guys had Cadillacs as status symbols, but Bob didn't have one. His amplifier was his status symbol and he drove it on all incoming and outgoing calls, voice just booming out for God and everyone else to hear.

"Good morning," he thundered, "This is the Green Shield Life Company." Oh, God, he was good. A thrill to listen to.

A small, timid voice on the other end of the line said, "I'm looking for Mr. Bob Potter, please."

"You got him, partner, what do you need?"

"Well, sir, I'm the assistant manager at the Tradewell store out by your house. We have one of your checks here. It's been returned by the bank."

I felt terrible, mortified, humiliated. Here was my idol being eviscerated by some little clerk in front of his sales staff and bosses. I wanted to yank the phone off his desk to save him.

It didn't even seem to register with Bob. With a great big grin he leaned back in his judge's chair and bellowed, "Now just what the hell did they do that for?"

The little voice seemed even smaller. "Well, sir, your check was marked ‘NSF'."

It was getting worse. This was no mistake. Bob had hung a slow reader on them and he was busted. Bob leaned forward and put his mouth up close to the microphone and dropped it about two octaves. He almost whispered, "Now, my young friend, I want you to remember that I didn't call you, you called me, so you'd better be ready to answer some questions. The first one is, just what does that NSF mean?"

The assistant manager sounded like he was about to cry as he blurted out, "Well, sir, it means not sufficient funds."

Bob leaned back again and laughed loudly. "Oh Bull," he yelled, "Have them run it through another bank, they can't all be out of money." And hung up the phone.

You are in complete control on the phone. Try cold popping for thirty days and it will become a life-long habit. It's not only good for you; it's a blast in the bargain.