Welcome to this week's NeverColdCall.com Newsletter by #1 Bestselling Author Frank Rumbauskas

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FROM:
Frank Rumbauskas

Because I get such a volume of email from visitors to the website as well as subscribers to this newsletter challenging the idea that cold calling is a waste of time, I decided to devote this newsletter to addressing those challenges and concerns.

One of the first things I always notice is that the particular attitude or belief of a person who defends cold calling is usually very predictable depending on
their current position, number of years spent in sales, track record during their career, etc. You may recall the introductory chapter of my book where I outline the various personalities in the world of selling and how they each tend to react to the words "cold calling is a waste of time." For review, or if you haven't read the book, here they are:

"Wow, somebody else gets it! It's nice to finally see
the truth coming out in the mainstream media."

- Successful salespeople in our new economy

"You know, I've always thought so myself. It seems
like I bang my head against the wall cold calling but
not much ever seems to come from it."

- The majority of salespeople nowadays

"Are you kidding me? That's just a lazy attitude.
You've got to beat the streets, knock doors, pound
the pavement, and dial for dollars every day, day in
and day out, if you can possibly have any success
in sales. There's no other way to do it. There are
no tricks or shortcuts, or anything else you can do
other than work hard."

- The 'old timers,' most of whom are burned out

"We require our salespeople to make 50 cold calls per
day. They must document this with call logs if it's on
the phone or with business cards if they're going out in
person."

- The vast majority of unsuccessful, disrespected sales managers

The two distinct personality types who send in the most hate mail are the last two. Our staff receives a large volume, sometimes dozens per day, of emails from people such as these who visit our site, read at least some of it, and jump to the contact page to tell us how ridiculous it all is and that one can have absolutely no hope of succeeding in sales without spending every spare moment cold calling.

Part of the problem with a lot of very old ideas out there is that our world of selling is somewhat closed off from other areas of business that continue to
adopt and embrace newer, more efficient ideas. I was reminded of this recently while re-reading Seth Godin's excellent book, Permission Marketing.  Here's a book that was intended for business owners and marketing executives, yet it provides a much-needed dose of common sense that would be of great benefit to sales organizations, and especially sales managers, who continue to cling to very old, and in their minds, very right, ideas. Unfortunately, our brave new world has made some of these old, right ideas very, very wrong.

Seth Godin talks about Interruption Marketing versus Permission Marketing. Interruption Marketing is traditional advertising that interrupts your day in
an attempt to get your attention and sell you something. In other words, its the marketing equivalent of Cold Calling. Permission Marketing is systematically getting prospects to give you permission to present to them. In other words, its marketing's equivalent of what I teach salespeople to do. Because metaphors are such a great way of making a point, here's one from his book. For our purposes here, I've taken the liberty of replacing the words "Interruption Marketer" with "Cold Caller":

The Two Ways To Get Married:

The Cold Caller buys an extremely expensive suit. New shoes. Fashionable accessories. Then, working with the best database and marketing strategists, selects the demographically ideal singles bar.  Walking into the singles bar, the Cold Caller marches up to the nearest person and proposes marriage. If
turned down, the Cold Caller repeats this process on every person in the bar.
If the Cold Caller comes up empty-handed after spending the entire evening proposing, it is obvious that the blame should be placed on the suit and the
shoes. The tailor is fired. The strategy expert who picked the bar is fired. And the Cold Caller tries again at a different singles bar.

Are you getting the point he tries to make in that story, and how it relates to us? Think about it. A salesperson spends hours, days, and weeks cold calling with dismal results. The salesperson goes to the sales manager or corporate trainer for coaching and advice on what to do differently to start getting results. And what advice is ALWAYS given in these situations? You guessed it. A conversation ensues about what the salesperson is saying. A lot of overused, old, and very wrong ideas begin to surface. Things such as "Initial Benefit Statement," "Gatekeeper," "Elevator Speech," and other concepts that once upon a time were the right answers, but have since become very wrong answers. Working on these things is the equivalent of the man in the story blaming his failure on the suit, changing into a new suit, then going to a different singles bar to do it all over again.

(How many of us have said "this building stinks," then cold called a different
building and got the same results? I've done it plenty of times.)

With the business world in its present state, I really don't see how salespeople, managers, and organizations can afford to keep fooling away their time on old ideas that were once right but are now wrong and obsolete. It is this very feature of capitalism that is causing salespeople, managers and organizations to fail in record numbers. What I'm talking about was first explained by Dr. Joseph A. Schumpeter, the former Austrian Minister of Finance and Harvard Business School professor. He stated that capitalism is "creative destruction." In other words, capitalism is a perpetual cycle of destroying old, less-efficient businesses and ideas and replacing them with new, more-efficient ones. This feature of capitalism is inevitable and unavoidable. It is the reason for the record number of bankruptcies we're seeing today. People and companies are clinging to old, obsolete ideas and are being dragged down to failure by them. Yet they still won't let go. I think the reason they can't let go is simply because it wasn't all that long ago that they really did have the right answers. Look at our current world of rapidly advancing technology and how quickly those with college degrees in engineering or computer programming become obsolete. The problem is that what they learned in school has become outdated within a couple of years of their graduation. It reminds me of a story I once heard about Albert Einstein when he was a professor. One of his student assistants who was preparing for an incoming class said, "Professor Einstein, what test are we giving them?" To which Einstein replied, "The same test we gave them last week." Bewildered, the student assistant replied, "But Professor Einstein, we already gave that test." Einstein simply said, "Yes, but the answers are different this week."

The bottom line is that the answers are different. The rules have changed. Time is running out for those who do not adapt to the new rules. As Napoleon Hill put it so well, "Whenever a nation, a business institution, or an individual ceases to change and settles into a rut of routine habits, some mysterious power enters and smashes the setup, breaks up the old habits, and lays the foundation for new and better habits."

If you're not achieving the sales success you desire, perhaps its time for you to lay the foundation for new and better habits. Because I wouldn't deserve to call myself a salesperson if I didn't take this opportunity to "ask for the order," order my "Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In The Information Age" program right now. It will pave the way for you to not only learn and adopt new and better ways of selling but will show you exactly what those ways are. It's not hard. In fact, it's quite simple and will make your life a whole lot easier once you implement it. Here's the direct link to the order page:

Order 'Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time' right now

Remember, you'll have the e-book in your hands in about one minute, along with a bonus package of over $300 in amazing products that will have you selling more immediately!  (The book and CDs will ship within one business day.)

(To order by phone please call (602)231-6711, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.)

Be sure to send in any questions you'd like to see
answered in a future mailbag. The email address is:

newsletter@nevercoldcall.com

And keep the success stories coming. Include "Success Story" as the subject
line and send to:

successstories@nevercoldcall.com

I read those first!

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Thanks once again for your time and thank you for reading. Good luck and happy selling!

To your success,

Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr.

PS: Imagine what it would be like if you never had to make a cold call - ever again. You'll be able to do exactly that with "Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In The Information Age" - get it right now:

Order 'Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time' right now

Copyright 2008 Frank J. Rumbauskas, Jr. and FJR Advisors, LLC. All rights reserved. "Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In The Information
Age" and "Never Cold Call Again" are registered trademarks of FJR Advisors, LLC.