How do you escape the "cold calling" rut?

I get questions.

Here's a recent one:

I started in insurance three months ago. I was given the 'old school' speech about cold calling: being told that I would probably have to make around 600 cold calls per week; if it's not working, 'just increase your number of calls''; go out and hand out business cards by the hundreds; etc. I'm still getting nowhere. Everytime I bring it up, I'm told that it's all a 'numbers game'. Then I'm reminded that 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome! Cold calling six, 600, or 6000 times without a result is not a numbers game, it's insanity.

How do I get out of the 'cold calling' rut? I'm not making enough money yet to pay for a full-out advertising campaign structured by a professional, so what do I do? How do I stop struggling and going deeper into the 'quicksand' and start selling? What is the key? How do you make the transition?

There are so many things to comment on. Here are a few:

If you are handing out hundreds of business cards and getting no where, I can't help but wonder what is on those cards, what are you saying right before or as you hand them out, and who are you handing them to?

If you hand your business card to people without them wanting it, you're moving too soon.

If you are handing your business cards to the wrong audience, you'll never get a response.

This is a little like going to a cafe and suddenly seeing some customer there run around the room, shaking hands and handing out business cards. It's highly unlikely that you'll care, or keep his or her card, or call him or her later. The whole scenario is un-natural.

Personally, I hate cold calling.

That's why I don't do it.

Instead, I use the principles in my book,There's a Customer Born Every Minute, and in my Nightingale-Conant program, The Power of Outrageous Marketing, to get people to call me.

Here's a sample of what I mean:

Most people go to business events and paper the room with their business cards.

Then they wonder why no one calls them back.

What I do instead is arrange to be a speaker in front of the room. After people hear me, they all want my business card. They ask for it. And when they ask for it, they almost always call me later. I don't have to sell them. I don't have to "cold call." All I have to do is answer the phone.

You can do this, too.

I can't explain it all in this blog entry, but you get the idea.

Make the fish come to you.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS - Frank Rumbauskas has a new book on this very subject that you might want to get: Never Cold Call Again: Achieve Sales Greatness Without Cold Calling. I think his offer is still going on over at http://www.franksonetimeoffer.com/