Why Do You Need to Cold Call? Success does require leaving your comfort zone. Start cold calling potential clients.
By Grant Cardone Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
At some point in your career, you will be required to call someone you don't know to get something you want. The phone can take you to another atmosphere. If you get your phone game on, you will get more confidence, have higher levels of activity, and a bigger bank account. To get things you desire but don't yet have, you will have to cold call in life.
A cold call is much different than a warm call. A warm call refers to calling a prospect with whom you've had some prior connection between yourself and the prospect. Warm calls could come from a previous sales call, a referral, a past appointment, an internet lead, someone you met at an event, or a response to an ad. A hot prospect has called you and raised his hand, "I want the product, when can we schedule a time to show it to my people?"
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The cold call, meanwhile, is the solicitation of business from potential customers who were not anticipating such an interaction. Cold calling is a technique where a salesperson, technician or service person contacts individuals or businesses who have not previously expressed an interest in the product or services being offered. Cold calling typically refers to phone calls but can also entail drop-in visits, such as door to door.
The willingness to call those not yet known is one of the great traits of highly successful entrepreneurs and business people. The willingness to contact and get meetings with people you don't yet know to get what you have not yet gotten is cold calling. My personal definition of cold calling is that the beast makes the cold call while the excuse makers scream and cry.
I say this because many people hate using the phone to cold call. Why? Let me list the reasons:
- Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die.
- Everyone wants to have a six-pack but don't want to put in the time.
- Everyone wants to be the boss but won't go out on their own.
- Everyone wants to be a millionaire but won't spend $1000.
- Many people are good at adding and bad at multiplying.
- Most people don't value your time.
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Cold Calling is difficult, but you will not advance your career or business without making a cold call at some point. Remember that those willing to do the things others won't do, will create the life they want, but don't yet have. Who needs to make cold calls? Here are just a few examples of who must get great at the cold call:
- Startups
- Sales organizations
- Direct marketing and network marketing groups
- Job search
- Inventors and technology
- Agents for entertainment, sports, celebrity, PR, promoters, deal makers
- Real estate buyers, sellers, brokers, syndicators
- Investment funds
- Fundraisers
- Professionals including bankers, lawyers, accountants, politicians, doctors, chiropractors, dentists, salon practitioners
- Service Industry such as landscapers, roofers, plumbers, contractors
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Who makes cold calls? Anybody that wants money makes cold calls. If you're a start-up, why are you borrowing money? Mark Cuban says the dumbest thing you can do is to go borrow money to start a company. Why would you do that? You know why you would do that? Because you are chicken. There are 28 million businesses in America. All of them did a business plan and nobody knows how to make a call.
You're scared to go make the call they didn't teach you in college. They don't teach this in college—guaranteed. Harvard, they ought to have my cold calling program in their business school. If you can make a cold call, you have freedom. The phone is a multiplier. The phone is a way for me to talk to 15 people in 15 minutes. I got frequent before I got great.
The average American makes eight calls a day. That's around 250 calls a month and 3,000 calls a year. And the average American, I want to remind you, is living paycheck to paycheck. You need the cold call. Invest in Cardone University today and master it.
