With Cold Calling- You Get Out What You Put In
As many of us do, I took a little inventory of the things I should be thankful for this past Thursday. Other than the most obvious stuff- a happy healthy 3 year old little dude, a wife that isn't completely bored with me yet and a full belly, I was also grateful for my job.
Back in the mid 90s I was fresh out of college managing a front desk at a hotel hoping to one day become the General Manager. I was accustomed to long crappy hours and dealing with the public -which most of know can be challenging. At the time a large percentage of my friends were living the high life at multiple tech companies making obscene amounts of money relative to their experience.
As luck would have it, after finally deciding to take the plunge into the tech industry…within a year the bubble burst.
While this was a difficult time for me, my adjustment to the downturn was much easier than most because of my experience in the hotel world. I wasn’t accustomed to having that silver spoon fed to me immediately after college graduation…unlike some of my co-workers. (Man - were those people awful to be around when the crap hit the fan!) Not one of them had the capability of dealing with any kind of adversity because they had gotten accustomed to having things handed to them and then doubling their income year over year.
In retrospect the two things that my hotel experience instilled in me was work ethic and a realistic expectation of what that work ethic would produce. Seems simple to me. You get out what you put in.
With the benefit of hindsight, I attempt to instill this mindset into every member of my team.
The goal is to focus on their realistic success. With every new hire who is relatively new to the cold calling game, I need them understand that they aren’t necessarily going to kill it out of the gates. Being a success in sales, more often than not, is a arduous process. There is no magic wand they can wave to suddenly blow their number out. If they actually take the time to absorb the knowledge we’ve obtained the hard way at AG over the years and are methodical with their approach, inevitably they see success.
Unlike the mid to late 90s, deals aren’t just going to fall out of the sky. What we make abundantly clear to them is the more calls you make you greatly increase the chances of uncovering a sales lead. Very rarely do we just stumble on something…we need to expect to put in the time and effort to uncover that "bluebird type of opportunity." -Hey it ain’t pretty, but who ever said cold calling was.