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

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***Success Story***

Hi Frank

"Wow!"..is all I can say regarding
the negative email from Mr. Personality
himself. I would like to take this opportunity
to share with you my results thus far by using
your book. I work for a printing company in
Mass. Printers come a dime a dozen so
sales is usually pretty difficult - especially if
you are a novice like me.

What can I say? In one month, by using email,
cards, flyers, and other marketing strategies I
have designed - out of 10 contacts I have gotten
appointments with EIGHT. Now, that is just 10
so far! It would have taken me 150 calls just to
get HALF of those appointments.

I have had folks call me LAUGHING at some of the
techniques I have used. They think I am unique and
whether or not they need my services, they want to see
me.

I have been at this job for under two months. I've sold
one job and am confident I will succeed in others. I HATE
COLD CALLING. Now, all my fellow sales colleagues are
scratching their head and with knitted eyebrows are
asking ME for ADVICE!

Thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU! I will let you
know how I make out in the future.

Christine

P.S. I think the biggest thing I have learned is to not
take things too seriously. What is the worst thing that
can happen? They say no???? I actually had one meeting
end up with us both singing a song! He found out I was
a singer on the side and next thing you know, he pulls
out a guitar and we started singing! No sale, but what
an experience.

My comments:

Christine,

Congratulations on your success and the fact that you're finally having fun with your job! Life is too short not to! By the way I'm not sure offhand which email or which Mr. Personality you're referring to. I get so much hate mail I can't even keep track! The people who write it, however, apparently don't realize how encouraging it is to me and how much it drives me on to even greater things. In a conversation with Robert Kiyosaki, the author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," he explained to me that hate mail and other opposition is a sign that I'm actually accomplishing something and helping people to further themselves. A lack of hate mail and opposition would be a red flag that I'm not achieving enough through my efforts, so keep that in mind for when you encounter it in your own life.

As you know, I talk about the concept of the "elusive obvious" in my book. One of the reasons my techniques work so well is the fact that they're simple, in many cases so simple that they fall into the category of the elusive obvious. They're the things that people do not see even though they're right under everyone's noses. Or people don't bother trying them because they seem too simple to work, yet it's their very simplicity that makes them so extremely effective. Of course some of my techniques aren't so simple and require a lot more planning and execution but the simple ones are enough to get you off to a great start.

I also love the fact that prospects are laughing at your techniques when calling you to request an appointment. (Isn't it nice when they call YOU for an appointment instead of the other way around?) It means you're doing the most important thing a salesperson can do - you're identifying yourself as unique and not like the rest of the salespeople out there!

And of course, most importantly of all, you've made your job fun. Nothing is  worse than a life sentence of working at a job you hate, so the fact that you're enjoying your job now is a fantastic accomplishment. And who knows - maybe you can apply this to your singing! It's a little-known fact that Peter Lemongello never had a record contract. He produced his album on his own then used a carefully planned self-marketing system to promote and sell it, and look at what he was able to do without a record company backing him. He became a household name within 16 weeks by blanketing New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas with his self-created and self-funded marketing campaign.

Keep me posted on how things progress, and when other salespeople ask you for advice, be sure to send them to my site!

***Letter From A Reader***

First off, I would like to express my appreciation.
I think your material is great.

I purchased your material out of curiosity. I have
read many books and even been to seminars that tout
the newest or best way of gaining more clients and
increasing sales earnings. Yours is the first that
has hit the nail on the head and holds true in any
sales arena.

I work in the used computer hardware industry, selling
mid-range to high-end corporate servers. This is a
very competitive market and can be very difficult in
applying the typical sales strategies. I truly
believe that cold calling is a waste of time. The
owner of our company and our sales manager still
believe that cold calling is the key to success. It
was my hope that they would be interested in your
material; unfortunately, they are not. I was told that
I'd better not share this with any of the other sales
staff and create problems.

With my wide range of reading, etc., I have already
applied many of the suggestions you make. All of this
is done while I dial my required 50-plus calls a day.

I have had pretty good success. Almost all from my
own separate investment. My only hope is bringing
around the owner in the value of marketing, which
does not appear to be promising.

Again, I appreciate your work and would like to offer
a couple of names that I have forwarded your
information to.

Keep up the good work.

My comments:

First off, I'd like everyone to know that this letter accompanied a copy of my program that was mailed back and a refund requested. The name of the person who wrote this was left out for obvious reasons. Since our return rate is only about 1 out of every 300, and since one must assume that at least half of those simply bought the program, copied it, and mailed it back the next day with the intent to get it for free all along, I always want to know the exact reason behind every legitimate refund request in order to prevent them from happening in the future.

This one has a rather sad cause behind it - a dictator manager who persists in forcing his or her salespeople to make 50-plus calls each and every day, no matter what. Isn't it amazing that companies will have sales reps on staff who exceed their quotas every month, and yet they force these same successful reps to waste valuable, productive selling time making 50-plus calls a day like a bunch of robots?

This unfortunate letter reminds me of a past experience I had at a job. This is the same company I wrote about in my book, the one with the regional director who had zero experience and held the "Beat Your Best" fiasco on the first day of each month. As if that wasn't enough, this director also held "Cold Call Blitzes" twice each week, for half a day each time. One was a "canvassing" blitz every Tuesday morning, and the other was a phone blitz every Wednesday afternoon. By the way, for any managers out there, please don't use the word "blitz" with your people. This causes a loss of motivation in much the same way and for the same psychological reasons that the word "funnel" does as I explain in my book.)

Anyway, on to my point. Not only did they require these idiotic "cold call blitzes," but they were mandatory for everyone. Even the 10% of reps in the office who were at 150%, 200%, or more. And did they hate it! They resented having their time wasted on such an unproductive pursuit. After all, these people had already proven that they could make it big without wasting entire half-days cold calling. This is an example, as well as the letter I reprinted here, of how a company writes its own bankruptcy petition by taking qualified, successful people and wasting their time on something so non-productive.

In any case, thank you for your kind words, and I'm very sorry to hear of your current situation. You're in a good position though: since you're obviously producing as a result of your own efforts and not the required 50-plus cold calls every day, you may be able to leverage your success and use it to eliminate the cold calling requirement. After all, good salespeople are hard to find and they definitely wouldn't want to lose one!

***Letter and Success Story***

Frank,

I ordered your book last Friday. I read the .pdf format as
soon as I got it. It took about 5-6 hours. It would have
been quicker but I took 20 pages of notes. I received the
cd's yesterday and have listened to them twice. I can't
believe how dead on accurate you are! I am presenting some
of these ideas to my sales manager tomorrow at 4:00. My
goal is to implement everything you talked about. I want
to get this done within 1-2 months. I will see great results
within 3-4 months. Once this is successful for my team in
Louisville, Ky I am going to present these ideas to the
owner of the company. I feel that he will open up a new
position for me to train the whole sales force on these
ideas. I have been extremely excited about these ideas.
I have talked to everybody I know about these "outside the
box" ideas. It is amazing what kind of response you get
from people when you are extremely excited about something.
I will take Paycor's Louisville office to the next level
now, later, I will take all of Paycor to the next level.
Thanks so much for your outstanding ideas,

Bryan Blanford
Paycor

A few days later:

Our assistant vp was in town yesterday. I mentioned I have
some great ideas to implement for our Louisville office. He
was so impressed with the info and my enthusiasm that he
wants me to spend time with each rep across the region to
train them.

Thank you Frank. I am so pumped about these elusively obvious
ideas!

My comments:

Bryan,

Your enthusiasm about hitting the ground running and using the entire system is GREAT. One of my frustrations is seeing how many people buy it but don't do anything,or try maybe one or two ideas but don't put any real enthusiasm into it. You, on the other hand, are taking charge and putting the system to use exactly as I intended it. I especially like your idea of presenting it to your managers and your VP. The fact that you'll now be responsible for teaching these ideas to others is probably the best thing that can happen for you - you'll quickly see that the fastest way to learn something yourself is to help others learn it too. I'm really glad to hear that your upper management is open-minded and doesn't take the "it's our way or the highway so go cold call" approach to sales management.

Here's the best part of your email:

"I feel that he will open up a new position for me to train the whole sales force on these ideas."

Those words tell me that you're sure to attain high success both in your job and in life. The only thing better than taking advantage of an opportunity is creating the opportunity, and you're well on your way! Thanks for sharing your success, and please keep me posted on your progress!

***Question***

Hi Frank,

I have recently subscribed to your newsletter and
have enjoyed the first issue received yesterday.

Maybe you can help me please. I am in the process of
emigrating to Austin, Texas with my wife and son. Is
there any insight you can give me in selling in the
U.S. and how culturally different it is compared to
the United Kingdom?

I value your time and opinion.

Kind regards,
Kenny
United Kingdom

My comments:

Kenny,

Since I haven't personally investigated selling in the UK and other areas of the world, my knowledge in this area goes as far as the correspondence and communications I've had with salespeople in the UK. The good news is that our readers in the UK have all of the same questions, challenges, and problems as our readers in the US. Human nature is human nature, so from the standpoint of the psychological aspects of selling, that definitely won't change. As to the cultural differences, if anything, you'll probably find Austin to be quite a bit more laid back than you're used to. Having been raised in the NJ/NYC area, I continue to come off as perhaps a bit too formal for most people here in the Phoenix area. While I still dress like I did "back east," I've learned to tone things down as far as interacting with other people in a business situation. Austin is even more easygoing than Phoenix so you'll definitely notice the difference. As far as language, obviously there are some quirks between British English and American English, but I'm sure you'll pick them up quickly, and you needn't worry about saying the wrong thing.

We receive a tremendous amount of orders each day from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, and all of the feedback has been very positive and consistent with the feedback received from our American customers.

One thing to look forward to: I worked with a gentleman from London several years ago, and the simple fact that he was from the UK and had the accent opened a lot of doors.

***Question***

Frank,

Your newsletter and website do not specify what
industries your techniques are suited to. I'm in
real estate. Do you think this would work for me?

Sabby

My comments:

I included this one because it's such a common email, one that we receive dozens of times each day.

When I wrote the book and produced the CDs, I was honestly a bit worried myself that while my methods have worked exceedingly well for me, that I obviously have not sold in every industry and that they might not work as well for others. Now that thousands of copies have been sold and hundreds of letters and emails from customers have been received, I can say with confidence that this does in fact work for practically every salesperson out there.

Here is a partial list of the various types of people who have reported back with excellent results after putting the program into action:

Residential real estate
Commercial real estate
Stockbrokers
Real estate investment brokers
Custom tailors
Telecom sales
IT/Internet sales
Long-distance services
Life insurance
Annuities
Home improvement sales
Advertising sales
Building supplies
Enterprise software sales
CRM sales
Computer hardware sales
Steel frame sales (wholesale to contractors)
Legal services (sold to law firms/lawyers)
Medical/dental sales
Thermal coating sales (sold to homeowners)
Heavy equipment sales
Tractor-trailor sales
Automobile fleet sales
Consulting services
Health food and vitamin sales
Tanning salon equipment sales
Moving companies
Mailing list sales
Mailing services sales

In addition to traditional salespeople, a number of independent professionals such as doctors, attorneys, dentists, accountants, and veterinarians have reported excellent results with my prospecting system. In fact I've even had  military recruiters buying it recently - talk about a diverse list of careers!

My point, Sabby, is that selling is selling, much like I explained in my reply to the previous email that human nature is human nature. These techniques and methods are applicable to selling anything that is sold. As you can see, this has been used successfully in everything from selling trucks to custom suits to insurance to vitamins to building supplies.

If you're ready to put these powerful methods to use for yourself, it's all in my "Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In The Information Age" complete program including the full book and two full-length audio CDs totaling 2-1/2 hours of me rambling on about this stuff. To order, please visit this page:

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

Do it right now. You'll have the e-book in just a few minutes, and can start putting my system to use immediately.

(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!

Please forward this newsletter to anyone you think it may interest:

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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.