If I want a product or service I will tend to ask for recommendations or research it. I have found, and it may just be my experience, that the companies who adopt the cold calling hard sell are never the ones I would buy from.

I agree with Su, if someone is not hard sell then there are sometimes opportunities there to work with each other, or to refer them to other more suitable companies.

At the end of the day it is about courtesy, treat the caller as you would like to be handled, and when I say I am not interested in that particular product or service because I am tied into a contract or have purchased or have spent the budget – STOP – don’t keep giving me the hard sell, it will only alienate me.

Excellent blog Su, thank you.

If anyone did hang up on me, I would put it down to them having a bad day. I never take it personally. Incidentally, I have had just one person last year hang up on me. It turned out that he had just received an email informing him that he was to be laid off the following week.

Good to remember: “people are not their behaviours”

If you are refering to the tanacity of the salesperson to keep going, then fine, but remember: People only buy what they percieve is missing and that they cannot fix with their current resources.

Don’t get hung up on whether cold calling works or not. It does, if it is done correctly, with respect and with the intention of helping someone to buy.

One of the main reasons salespeople say Cold Calling doesnt work is because they are doing it wrong. Starting with the mindset that they are trying to persuade or manipulate.

In today’s environment, the power in the sales relationship is firmly with the buyer not the seller.It is the seller’s job to help the buyer to buy. Gone are the days when the seller knew everything about a product and the buyer very little.

The way I see it, my job is not to product info dump on prospects, because they probably know more about the products I represent than I do. However, I am there to be a helping hand should they need it. I help buyers to buy – not necessarily the products or services that I am representing. That’s ok too because buyers only buy what they cannot fulfill from their own resources and what they perceive is missing.

“Traditonal” telemarketing (as opposed to that practiced by Aquila & Company), still tries to either bludgen people into buying, persuade them into buying something they neither want nor need to buy from someone else or it relies on thousands of calls to “manage coincidences”. None of these techniques work and are damaging to the image of professional telemarketing organisations.

There are times even in what I consider my extensive network I cannot get an email for a organisation I would like to speak at and have to resort to cold calling. More often than not I am charming enough not to have the phone slammed down.

Good tips Su