Sales Cold Calling Psychology - Simple Tips and Techniques

Sales cold calling is an essential part of any kind of sales work. If you're successful at it, you will succeed in sales. If you have a hard time with this, that will put your sales career at risk. And if you're having a hard time, you'll not enjoy your job.

There are many great techniques and tips out there. But they assume a lot of things. For example, they assume that you enjoy cold calling or at the very least that you don't hate it.

Most people, especially when they are starting out in their sales career, dislike this aspect of their jobs. If you're able to conquer that hatred and dislike, you'll be able to utilize all the methods, techniques and tips out there in effectively prospecting and achieving sales.

In this game before you have sales cold calling scripts, a set of sales leads, the product and even the general pitch, you have to overcome the psychological barriers. If you can do that, the world is yours.

Be Ready to be Rejected

The first thing you can do to handle rejection in a healthy manner is to expect a certain amount of rejection. It's that simple. If you know statistically that you will be rejected a certain number of times, you'll go into each call expecting rejection.

Does that mean you should give up or have an attitude of defeat on every cold call? Absolutely not! But if you have an unrealistic expectation that every cold call will result in a sale, you will be extremely disappointed and disheartened, and your morale will plummet.

Think of Each Rejection as a Stepping Stone

One a larger scale, most recent college graduates are willing to work grunt jobs, because they have hope that it will be a stepping stone to something bigger. Without that hope, their menial jobs become a drudgery.

For sales cold calling, think about it this way: each rejection is just a stepping stone to a sale. Listen, statistically, you will be rejected. If you think about it as a numbers game, it will help you.

If you say to yourself, you HAVE to go through a certain number of rejections before you get to a sale, the rejection will for you just be a path to success, just like a bank teller that has to go through it to become the president of the bank.

Psychology of Sales

The first and major challenge is not whether or not you have the right script, right tone, or the right anything. The thing you will have the conquer and master the most in sales is YOURSELF.

Anyone who has done any telesales or telemarketing knows what I'm talking about. And the major psychological hurdle the rejection.

No one likes to be rejected. I'll go into how you can conquer this hurdle in a little bit, but let's first look at the scope of rejection that we face as cold callers and sales people. In one of my last sales jobs, we were required to make 125-150 cold calls a day.

On average, we got a hold of the decision maker about 20 times. Out of the 20-25 contacts, only 4-5 agreed to attend a presentation. That's 20-25% of the people agreed. That means 75-80% rejected you from your cold call.

That's not to mention that only 20-25% of the people that attended a presentation actually bought my product. If you have a hard time with rejection, this is going to be a tough job since 80-90% of the people you talk to will reject you.

The Best Sales People Are Reject MOST of the Time

You can't avoid rejection. The BEST sales reps on this earth experience more rejection than not. Even if you have a 50% closing rate, which is highly unusual, that means you are being rejected 50% of the time.

The best rainmaker sales reps get rejected most of the time. Remember that statement and you'll succeed in sales cold calling.

Don't Take It Personally!

Never, ever take rejection personally. This is why most people give up. We are emotionally drained in cold calling because we feel like people are rejecting us as people. They are not rejecting you, they are rejecting your product or they are rejecting a sales person, not you in particular.

For most cold callers, you will experience the brunt of the culmination of all the worst experiences a prospect has. To think that prospects are rejecting you as a person is a lie, but that's how we generally see it. If you see them rejecting a third party or object, i.e. the product, service or sales people in general, you will be able to maintain your emotional health.

The Dutch have a great way of giving and receiving criticism that I believe makes them so polished as people. They do what's called triangulating. They criticize, reject or accept as quality or object and are able to keep that separate from the person with that quality or object.

I wrote more about sales cold calling in my article about how to sell insurance. Insurance sales is very heavily cold call dependent.