A Blog On Cold Calling

At some point in the last 20 years, making sales became a lot like brushing my teeth: no matter what else I accomplish that day, if I don’t do some business development then I feel like the day was missing something.

EXPLAINED

The school of thought is that we should always start our day by making our bed. That’s a good thought, except for me it’s a touch misguided: I’d rather brush my teeth, floss and take a walk than make my bed.

I can survive an unmade bed (in fact, an unmade bed looks kind of inviting at the end of a long day) but I would never ever go a single day without brushing my teeth (twice), or flossing, or doing some form of exercise. I just don’t feel right or ready for the world until those things are done. If there was some miracle day wherein I cured cancer, saved humanity from some utter disaster and found a secret for world peace, I’d still feel the day was missing something if I hadn’t also flossed and taken a brisk walk.

So too is it for me with prospecting in general and cold calling in particular: a day just doesn’t feel quite right if I haven’t reached out to someone.

I could close a million dollar contract, solve a major client crisis, and deliver some inspiring message somewhere, but if I hadn’t made at least a couple of calls, I just don’t feel good about my day.

It wasn’t always this way.

Time was (in the beginning), I HATED business development and cold calling. It was drudgery. But more than that, it was terrifying. I dreaded people hanging up on me, or laughing at me; I dreaded the fruitlessness of 10 unanswered dials, or worst of all being slightly off my game if someone happened to answer my phone. For example:

CHARLES, answering my call: Hello?

ME: Charles?

CHARLES: Yes. (Pauses momentarily). Who’s this?

ME: Hi Charles, this is Rob. Did I catch you at an okay time to introduce myself?

CHARLES: What’s this call regarding?

ME: Uuuuhhhhhhhh.

I was always afraid of this kind of scenario happening, of freezing in the moment when a person answered the phone but seemed slightly guarded; which sometimes filled me with dread of people actually answering my calls. This isn’t a healthy outlook (please don’t answer the phone, please don’t answer the phone…) so I had to find a way to fight through that fear and make myself make calls, regardless of the any risk of being rejected or shamed or flat-out embarrassed.

In the process, I created a monster.

I started rewarding myself every time I made a few calls. Make a few calls, get an espresso. Make a few calls, eat a piece of chocolate. Make a few calls, text a friend. Meanwhile I documented every call and then analyzed the data which in itself is fun for me since I love analyzing data; so making calls so that I was creating data points to analyze became a positive reinforcement for making calls in the same way that chocolate was a powerful positive reinforcement for me.

It all became such a powerful concoction for me. Like a drug. Eventually, over the course of a few years or more, calling went from being herculean to becoming second nature. Now it feels exciting, satisfying, even fun to call, and I don’t need chocolate or espresso or even data points to feel motivated. Plus I have had a lot of great conversations over time and this restores my faith in humanity.

This might sound okay, but in a way it has created its own special kind of hell. Because those days when Micromanagers From Hell put us in all-day internal meetings, or assign us something that has nothing to do at all with directly generating business, or where I just take a day off, it creates some angst/stress in me: how will I squeeze in my calls that day?? Because a day without calling is like a day without exercise: I can feel my body and my skills and my quota and even my purpose start to atrophy.

Anyway. Just like I’d never go a day without brushing my teeth, I try not to go a day without making a few calls. Honestly, it’s one of the most satisfying professional things I do all day. It took years to get here, but now it’s here to stay.