The Worst Cold Call Rejection I Ever Experienced
So regular day, just pick up the phone…
Call this guy, I introduced myself and said, “Hi, this is Eric Brief.”
Guy says, “Stop it right now… You are the biggest piece of scum I’ve ever met in my entire life. You’re worth less than the piece of crap that I stepped in yesterday at the bottom of my shoe that I scraped off!”
Anybody that heard this would have been maybe hurt or bothered but I was laughing my ass off because – I don’t even know this guy!
He didn’t even hear anything from me other than my name.
He knows nothing.
So I thought this was hilarious, right?
But I could totally imagine that if anybody heard it or even if I heard it on a day that was not great, I would have been furious.
Why It’s Impossible to Be Rejected
So here’s the thing, if you’re going to call people, you’re going to get rejected.
But that’s a ridiculous word.
People are just going to say no to you.
They’re going to say no to you.
At the end of the day, what you need to do in response to the nos is being able to regulate your emotions because realistically it, the only thing you can control on a cold call besides following your script is your emotions.
Don’t let someone else’s anger affect you. Move on to the next call.
The Context For Cold Calling
Now, I will say that it’s easier said than done, but if you have a context that is really good for your cold calling, then it’s going to help you big time.
And this is the context that I always start with at the beginning of every single day.
Even when I was two and a half years in the job and the number one salesperson in my office, I would still sometimes not want to pick up the phone and face the rejection…
Despite all the success I had!
But I would always pick it up because I remember something…
I remembered that I have absolutely nothing.
Every single month I start with a zero.
And that’s actually incredible.
I got to reinvent myself from nothing.
And the truth is, every single day, every single phone call, you’re at zero. You have absolutely nothing to lose when you’re cold calling.
So let’s say you pick up the phone and the person that you’re speaking with takes a crap on you. Well, when you get off that phone with that person, guess what just happened?..
You don’t have an appointment.
That’s the same thing that happened before.
You’ve lost nothing.
But if you don’t pick up the phone, you don’t have an opportunity to close a deal.
If I didn’t pick up the phone, I wouldn’t have hundreds and hundreds of deals that I got in my lifetime selling.
So yeah, the only risk is that someone can say no to you, except it’s not even really a risk…
It’s a guarantee.
But if you don’t get some no’s, you won’t get any yeses. More on that in just a minute.
The Only Risk in Cold Calling
I will tell you that there is only one risk that you can take ultimately when you are cold calling and that is bringing in negative emotion from the previous call or from some other area of your life into the following call after.
It is an absolute no, no, because if you do that, you are blocking yourself.
One of the most important things you can do when you’re cold calling is to earn the opportunity to speak with the decision maker.
The decision maker doesn’t need to speak with you.
You are auditioning for the role of digital marketer for that person and you need to get the part.
You need to get an opportunity to get a callback for that role.
So you’ve got to come in with the energy. You’ve got to come in with enthusiasm and confidence. That’s how you earn the opportunity to even pitch them in the first place.
So if you maintain the old energy: the anger, resentment – if you’re holding on to anything from the previous call, your prospect is going to feel that.
They’re going to know that and they’re going to be way less likely to want to talk to you.
Three Strategies To Overcome Negative Emotions
So I have three strategies for you that I want to give you that are going to absolutely help you clear the negative energy out from your calls.
Water
The first thing that I want you to do is have a drink of water. If you have a glass of water at your desk, stand up, have a drink of water.
That always helps.
It helps get out of that pattern that you’re locked into.
Laugh
I probably should’ve put this one at number one, but the number two thing is laugh.
If you have a sense of humor and you kind of laughed back at rejection, you have become so much stronger.
Ultimately this person just had a bad day, or they said no in a mean way because they’re dealing with something.
That’s got everything to do with them and nothing to do with you.
So please don’t worry about it.
The best thing you can do is laugh, because it actually is freaking hilarious to be angry at a stranger and to curse at a stranger or to say no with aggression and violence.
Think About the Numbers
So the last thing that I advise you to do is to start to deal with rejection on cold calls, is to start thinking about the math games.
Start crunching some numbers.
You may have heard this before, but if you make one hundred cold calls:
-a certain percentage will set appointments
-a certain percentage will show up to the sales call
-and a certain percentage of those are going to close
So every single cold call is getting you closer to your appointment, even if there’s a no.
So if it takes you 100 cold calls to make two deals, then every single cold call you make, you’re getting 2% closer to a sale.
Whether or not it’s a yes or a no.
So keep that in mind.
Wraping It Up
Progress is the key thing.
Keep on moving through.
The more committed you are to sales, the more you need to look at your numbers and the more you need to understand.
As my father says, it’s a numbers game.
It is actually.
Now the numbers game becomes a lot more favorable to you if you’re not bringing any negative energy in.
So work your process – be present on the calls and have a freaking good time.