I haven't read all the threads about cold calling in here so forgive me if some of this has been touched on but I'd like to talk a little about a problem that easily arises when cold calling...

Right now I have a dozen or so telemarketers that generate leads for my remodeling company. I have two supervisors and one manager. The telemarketers are simply reduced to robots who are instructed to read the scripts and rebuttals word-for-word. They generate just enough interest with the homeowner to set an appointment to pass the call on to a supervisor who is experienced and can take over the call from there. This way the telemarketer can get back on the phones and continue their relentless prospecting.

I've read John Durham threads where he talks about how call centers are chock full of low level telemarketers making $9 an hour, closing thousands of dollars in deals daily. Well this is certainly true, which means you can do it too of course, but there's a problem with that.

The reason they do it with no problem is because their daily job consists of simply making calls and reading off a script for a few hours a day. Anything they close is simply a bonus or a way to make the hours go by more pleasantly.



In mid-september, I wanted to get some two or three full time telemarketers to sell my direct mail services, primarily to help generate leads for my own ventures. I had outsourced a bunch on odesk and elance, getting scammed a couple times, having bad results, and a couple good results as well, but the problem was that I needed more reliability and also some people who could prospect and close the deal in entirety without having to simply generate leads.

So I recruited two guys who were with me years ago, who were both telemarketing managers for the past few years. I got both of them to leave their jobs because they trusted that my vision was good enough to make some serious money.

I put together some simple desks, phones, comfortable chairs, lots of whiteboards, leads to call, and let them go to work on a very high commission % and $$ per lead schedule.

These guys end up struggling to sell, even though they had tremendous amount of experience and expertise. They were going a week making calls without a deal, two weeks, etc.. then picking up small deals that were laydowns. Yet they were putting in lots of calls.

Until I got the phone bill and looked through the outgoing calls. They were fooling themselves, only making around 30-70 actual connects per day, sometimes as little as 20. I confronted them about this and they were shocked to see how little connects they actually made.

We discussed it and they realized how much time was actually wasted drinking coffee, chatting, going out to lunch, smoke breaks, etc...

They both felt that they were so good that call volume didn't really matter that much, that they didn't really need to use a script like the low level marketers, that they could wing it and close due to their expertise. WRONG!

They didn't have the rules and expectations that the low level telemarketers had, which kept them productive. They didn't have the self discipline to follow even what the peons were doing.


So I implemented a firm strategy that would change their mindset and make them more productive (and profitable). Make 1,800 dials per week (360 per day) and I'll pay $800, but with a lower commission on deal sold.

This changed EVERYTHING. Their minds switched completely to making 360 calls per day minimum, rather than focusing on how many leads they set or deals they closed. It completely took the stuff they couldn't control out of the equation.

Within two weeks they had fully shifted their mentality to simply grinding through a few hours of calls per day in order to make $800, and turns out they've both made between $1,500 and $2,000 per week since! And the best part is... I actually pay less than what I would if they were simply making the 360 calls without the $800 incentive!!!




The whole point of this is that you can't just compare what a $9 telemarketer does every day to what you need to do per day. Even though it should.

Your current mindset is to close deals or set appointments, when really it should be about making X amount of calls, period. The $9 an hour telemarketer doesn't go to work with the goal of setting so many leads per day, they go into work to make calls for 4 hours or whatever, just like a daily job.

The electronics employee at walmart doesn't really give a crap about how much $$ they sell each day, they simply go to work and do their little tasks. Maybe they make some bonuses here and there. That's how they get through it without stress.

I know it's incredibly difficult to muster the self discipline to make a hundred or more calls per day without interruption, for days at a time, using a script, but that's what you need to do. Otherwise, most of you will stress the hell out of yourselves.

You can even fool yourself thinking that you put in a ton of work when really you f**king didn't. You probably made calls while you surfed the internet, drank coffee, pissed, texted, facebooked, smoked, and whatever other crap you did while you should have been straight up making calls. This is how you end up "calling" for 4 hours when you really only had an hour of actual phone time.

If you're going to cold call, shift your mentality to making X amount of calls reading your script verbatim, and don't stop to do ANYTHING until you reach that goal, maybe one 15 minute break in a 3 or 4 hour time frame, but that's it.

If you're cold calling and focusing only on whether or not you're setting leads, you're going to burn out faster than a kitchen match.

Focus on making X amount of calls and THAT'S IT. Let your script and the numbers do their job. Don't like that idea? Don't even get into cold calling, it's not for you.