by Jacques Werth

Earlier this year, I answered the phone and a man said “I hate cold-calling.”

I said, “I’ve heard that from hundreds of salespeople. What about warm-calling?”

“Warm-calling, what’s that?” he asked.

I asked, “What’s your name and what do you sell?”

Ten minutes later, I knew Robert was calling lab managers, at myriad different types of laboratories, trying to get appointments to sell lab equipment and supplies. He had a good value proposition and he was trying to get the prospects interested enough to give him an appointment.  He seldom got appointments and, when he did, he rarely sold anything.

Most successful salespeople have been cold-calling for a very long time.  They are the survivors, the ones who stuck it out, put up with the pain and pressure, and hardened themselves to rejection. They learned how to get appointments with prospects who are interested in their products and services. Now, they get enough orders to earn a good living.

The first call that top producing salespeople make to a prospect is, by definition, a cold-call.  However, they don’t try to get appointments. They offer their product or service and ask the prospects if it is what they want.  Then, they call the same prospects every few weeks, again-and-again. They, change the wording of their offers each time.  Those are warm-calls. When a prospect is ready to change to a new supplier, it’s the prospect who asks for an appointment. A high percentage of those prospects eventually become customers. That’s just one of the results of “warm-calling.”

So, Robert learned warm-calling. “Now I make the most prospecting calls of all our salespeople, and the fewest sales visits,” he said. “And, my sales volume is  growing faster than I would ever have imagined.”

Obviously, there is a lot more to warm-calling than is explained in this article.

If you want to know more, or to tell me why you think it’s impossible, feel free to post your questions and opinions as a comment below.