Cold Calling Builds Character

According to the poll in the post "Do You Like Cold Calling?" only a quarter of sales pros actually like cold-calling, and only a measly 4 percent say it's their favorite activity. Since most people aren't good at what they don't enjoy (and vice versa), it's not surprising that most sales pros see it as a "necessary evil." And that's too bad, because there's a real benefit to cold calling that goes generating a few leads. Cold calling makes you stronger. And mastery of cold calling makes you unstoppable. Let me explain...

Why aren't people more successful? If you look carefully, you'll discover that, in most cases, it's not because they lack ability. While there are people who have natural talent, most people have the ability to learn any skill and to get reasonably good at it.

The reason that most people aren't successful is that they don't take action. They don't do what's necessary in order to become successful. Most of the time that's because of one thing: fear. In business, the two most common fears are fear of failure and fear of rejection.

Those are the exact two fears that you must confront, and overcome, when you master cold-calling. In my experience, sales pros who say they "hate" cold calling are seldom top sales reps. It's one thing to say that you no longer need to do it, or that you think it's more effective to generate leads a different way.

But HATING it? When you say that you HATE cold-calling, you're saying that you're still tied up in the fear of failure and fear of rejection. And that, by definition, means that you're not performing to your full abilities as a sales rep and a business person.

I, myself, had a horrible fear of cold calling. It was so bad that I didn't even like calling a restaurant for a reservation. As a consequence, when I worked for a big company, I often avoided making telephone calls to people I didn't know, preferring instead to use email whenever possible.

When I decided to become a full-time business writer, I knew that I needed to overcome my fear of cold calling because 1) I'd have to call strange editors and publishers in order to generate new clients, and 2) business writing involves setting up interviews with various bigwigs.

In other words, there was no way I could be successful at this if I was still afraid of failure and afraid of rejection.

To fix this problem, I could have taken a job in temporary job in sales that required cold calling. However, I elected to confront those fears in an environment that's equally fraught with failure and rejection -- the dating scene.

Like many men, I had always lacked the self-confidence to approach the type of women I really wanted to date. And as a fairly nerdy guy, recently divorced, and neither particularly handsome nor rich, I didn't have the attributes that might make the process easier.

And, let me tell you, the job title "freelance writer" is only marginally more impressive on the dating scene than "struggling artist" or "starving student."

That's not all. I had recently relocated cross-country, so nobody was going to "set me up" on a date. And because I now worked at home, I was unlikely to meet any women at work, unless you count the cleaning lady.

That meant, if I wanted to have a social life, I would have to force myself to approach women in semi-social settings (e.g. accidentally sitting nearby at Starbucks), and start a conversation.

If you think it hurts to be rejected over the phone by a stranger, try being rejected to your face by somebody who just evaluated your attractiveness... and found you beneath her standards. As far as fear of failure and fear of rejection, it's like cold calling on steroids.

Nevertheless, within six months, I had no shortage of dating opportunities.

I accomplished this by changing the meaning of "failure" and "rejection". Rather than considering it a failure if a woman "rejected" me, I decided that the ONLY failure was not trying. So even if I got "shot down" I had still won, simply because I had tried.

The experience was truly transformative. The anxieties from which I had suffered in the past completely disappeared. I no longer worried about being "rejected" and, what's more, I started enjoying the process. It was fun to meet new people, and I met many interesting women whom I would never otherwise have met.

More importantly, without that experience, I would NEVER have had the courage to approach the woman who is now my wife and mother of our two children.

As the result of overcoming fear in that area of my life, I stopped worrying about failure and rejection in business as well. I started making those difficult telephone calls -- when they needed to be made.

I'm far more confident in business, because the concept of rejection has become almost meaningless to me. It just doesn't enter into my thinking any longer.

I've seen other experiences -- including a stint at cold calling -- work the same wonders in many other people.

If you can get through your fear of rejection and start enjoying the process of putting yourself on the line, time after time, day after day, you can conquer virtually anything in the business world.