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Keeping Your Cool When The Customer Gets Hot

"You don't have to keep calling me!"

"Stop calling me!"

"It's 10 o'clock Monday morning, what nerve!"

"I'm going to be hanging up on you!"

"What part of no did you not understand?"

"Whos your manager?"

Do any of these responses above sound familiar? I bet they do! In fact, it would not surprise me if you are smiling right now because you also have experienced one, two or all of these responses. If you have then you understand that such mean responses come with the territory. I commend you for this because you are indeed a true cold caller! We can laugh now, but when you are in the moment and on the receiving end of these responses it can be very intense. It's really hard not to take these responses personally. And yes, it's hard to stay positive when you hear so much negativity. And yes, such negativity from your sales prospects can turn a great day into a not so great day.

So how does Mr. Cold Call deal with mean prospects? First of all, there is no single answer. However, there are ways to deal with it or at least reduce cold call frustration on your end and cold call resistance on their end. Here are four suggestions to keep in mind:

1. PROSPECTS WILL TAKE OUT THEIR PROBLEMS ON YOU!

The workplace along with outside pressures such as family and finances cause us a tremendous amount of stress. The sales prospects that you are contacting are not immune to these pressures and you must keep this in mind when you are making cold calls. When you encounter a prospect that is a bit out of control for the most part just back off. I would then try contacting them a few weeks later and make mention to the fact that you may have caught them at a bad time. In my experience, I have found this to be a good strategy since most people do not expect you to call back and do admire your persistence.

2. HUMOR HAS A PERMEATING EFFECT TO CHANGE A PROSPECTS ATTITUDE FROM NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE.

Humor also has the power to create and build rapport with your prospects as well! Take a personal risk and add humor when you are on the telephone with your prospect. If your prospect is acting resistant or if theyre stressed out humor can act as a perfect escape for your prospect. One minute theyre having a bad day your light humor can give them a reason to have a FANTASTIC DAY! One line that seems to lighten the mood is when a prospect is about to hang up on you. I then reply, (FIRST NAME OF PROSPECT), Are you going to hang up on me? I have found this to lighten the tension of the call.

3. REMEMBER THAT LIFE IS 10% WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU AND 90% OF HOW YOU REACT TO IT.

Read this quote from Charles Swindoll, American author, he writes about the importance of your attitude and how you use it to react to life as a whole.

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes."

4. WHEN YOU HEAR MEAN RESPONSES EXCHANGE YOUR STORIES WITH FELLOW CO-WORKERS.

When you experience mean responses from your prospects its healthy to get these internal frustrations out of your system. You will find that when you exchange stories with fellow co-workers it can be very self-satisfying and can even be cathartic. If you know that you are not alone in dealing with mean prospects then it makes cold calling less frustrating and easier to manage.

Copyright 2006 MR. COLD CALL SEMINARS - All rights reserved.

D.M. Arenzon

Mr. Cold Call, author of "114 Common Sales Objections, 153 Clever And Savvy Responses" and "How To Have Fun Cold Calling" has made over 80,000 cold calls in the past ten years (worked for companies such as CBS MarketWatch, Futures Magazine and Dartnell Publishing). In an effort to counter cold call frustration he began to develop a series of innovative cold call strategies that he now calls "The Mr. Cold Call Approach." This non-traditional approach to cold calling and sales prospecting is designed to make cold calling fun, reduce your prospect's level of resistance and finally, it's designed to inspire your prospect's curiosity. Once you have captured your prospect's curiosity (this includes your prospect's screener or gatekeeper) they will be more likely to listen to you, take your call, return your call and your chances of a sale have now increased dramatically!

Mr. Cold Call has personally spoken at Smith Barney, Brown & Bigelow, UBS, Inter-Tel, First Southern Bank, Merrill Lynch, Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors, Bank of America, Apricot Office Supplies & Furniture, New York Life Insurance, American Express, Pre-Paid Legal Services, New England Financial, A.G. Edwards, Morgan Stanley and Docutek Imaging Solutions. Mr. Cold Call and his non-traditional approach to cold calling and sales prospecting have been featured by a number of media outlets including Selling Power Magazine and Advantages Magazine. His approach is so far out-of-the-box that it is safe to say that absolutely no one is doing what Mr. Cold Call is doing! So, do you want to know why Mr. Cold Call has re-invented the cold call as we know it today? If you are curious then I'd like to welcome you to THE CREATIVE WORLD OF MR. COLD CALL!