Tony Gambone Interviews Jason Kanigan on the Tough Talk Radio show in this 25-minute discussion on why cold calling is almost always ineffective.
Jason shares the reason why: phone prospecting is frequently executed in a clumsy way and with the wrong purpose.
He then goes into changes you can make to turn your phone prospecting results around.
What's Wrong With Cold Calling, Explained As Tony Gambone Interviews Jason Kanigan
When you call someone who has never heard of you, and the first thing you do is try to sell them something, it's the equivalent of going on a blind date and immediately after meeting ask, "So, do you want to get married and have a family?"
Sounds outrageous, doesn't it. Yet this is what most people believe cold calling is.
Jason Kanigan is on a mission to transform 100,000 people from being perceived by the public as slimy tricksters who will say anything to get an order into trusted advisors who are well rewarded for their expertise.
A perception problem does exist between the public and salespeople! This problem has been created and perpetuated by bad salespeople. But the public has typically not encountered a true professional B2B salesperson, whose purpose is not to push a product or a service but to find out how best they can serve the prospect. And that service may be concluding, "Sorry, we're not a fit."
The idea of a salesperson NOT doing their utmost to force a prospect to buy is incredible, isn't it?
This perception is at the root of why cold calling doesn't work when attempted by untrained individuals with the wrong purpose.
Tony Gambone Interviews Jason Kanigan On How Cold Calling Can Be Effective
In the interview Jason points out how strange it is that we can slap a nametag on anyone, call them a salesperson and shove them out into the showroom to talk to potential customers. We would not do this in any other profession! Can you imagine saying, "You're a nurse now," to someone, and sending them out without any training to deal with medical problems? Or an accountant? An engineer? Yet it seems OK to do this with salespeople for some reason.
Why we would expect someone to be competent at phone prospecting without any training, with this perspective, is hard to understand. The truth is cold calling needs to have a different purpose than immediate selling to be successful. This is discussed in detail as Tony Gambone interviews Jason Kanigan. To work well, a cold call needs to reach the decision maker, and then start the conversation in an effective way so that there IS a "rest of the call". The purpose must be Filtering. Qualifying. Looking for Fit (or lack thereof, and that's OK). Qualify First, Sell Later.
Click here to listen in as Tony Gambone interviews Jason Kanigan, starting at 35:00.
