Are there really gazillions of negative responses our targets use on a cold call?
My wife, Nancy, and I love to hike in the mountains and a while back we were in Sedona, Arizona doing just that. (It’s beautiful, by the way if you like rocks. Many, many rocks. They even have mountains named as rocks like Red Rock and Cathedral Rock.) Anyway, as we were hiking up this one trail, I stepped on a fairly smooth rock and my boot lost a little traction, causing me to slip. Being a conscientious hiker, I proceeded to kick it off the path after regaining my balance as I certainly didn’t want someone else to have the same experience. But as I did it, I noticed that there were hundreds; no make that gazillions more of them, so I quickly gave up on my crusade to make hiking through Sedona safe for everyone.
So what does this have to do with appointment setting, you ask? Great question, and thanks for asking! Many times in my workshops on appointment setting, I’m told by our intrepid cold callers that it is just impossible to prepare for every potential negative response that can occur when making those calls. Those pesky suspects seem to have gazillions of them (like that tie in?). Anyway, for some unknown reason, that usually happens right after I assign a little exercise asking them to prepare a list of the most common ones they hear.
While there is some truth that I am still surprised by a new one from time to time; the old 80/20 rule applies here as it does most places in sales. The good news is that there are really only five categories of what I like to call Conditioned Responses (remember Pavlov and his dog? We all have our favorite response to get that caller off the phone when we’re cold called). The bad news, of course, is that several of them come in multiple flavors. But you can use the same approach to each category when countering them. That means that you only have to identify which category they fall into order to handle them effectively. Here are the categories:
· Direct questions or statements
· Already got one
· Don’t need one
· I’m really busy right now
· Send me some information
And here’s some suggested homework. Start tracking the Conditioned Responses you hear when talking to the person you think you want the appointment with. I’ll be that 80% of them are the same and they will all fall into these categories other than, “I’m not the right person”. Once you’ve done that, develop how you’ll handle each of the five categories and you’ll increase your effectiveness when calling!
If you’ve got one you’re really struggling with, share it with us and I’ll attack it in the following week’s blog.
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