Business Exchange

KEITH ROSEN: Think about the primary objective of a cold-call or prospecting call. It's probably not what you think. Most salespeople will say, "Well Keith, the goal of a cold-call is to get the sale or to get the appointment, make the demo, or even submit that proposal." In truth, this is not what the primary goal of what the cold-call is. So, I'm going to turn your world upside down a little bit. While this might sound a bit strange, the primary objective of cold-call is not to get their business but instead, to determine if you and that prospect are actually a good fit. Now, think for a moment about how this change in your attitude will actually affect your behavior and how you approach cold calling. While your traditional approach may be to go ahead and produce a measurable result, now your approach is just to determine to see if you and that prospect have a good match that's worth pursuing and moving on to the next stop in your sales cycle. The fact is, pushing the sales process forward before a prospect is ready is only creating what you want to avoid, which is putting pressure on the prospect and creating an adversarial position right from the start. So, be curious when making calls. If the primary objective now is to see if there's a fit, then naturally you're going to ask more questions. So instead of saying, "How can I go ahead and sell this person?" ask yourself "Do I even want this person as a customer?" I learned a long time ago that if you want to develop a career that you hate, then work with people that you can't stand. Instead of the prospect interviewing or qualifying you, now you're the one doing the qualifying. This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Qualify your prospects." Now you're the one doing the qualifying. The fact is, the interview process goes both ways.