No sales rep truly likes cold calling, even the ones that claim to thrive on it. With admin assistants screening for their bosses and many businesses utilizing caller-id now, it’s very hard to get a prospect on the phone. Of course there’s the standard “call early, call late, call often” method of cold calling but it’s still hit-or-miss. And how many times have you heard someone say, “Hello” in a cheerful voice only to have them change their tone because they realized they accidentally picked up the phone to a cold-caller? So while cold-calling is good for a few things – good practice for your elevator pitch is the only thing that comes to mind – it’s quite ineffective in today’s world. And a recent survey by CSO Insights reflects this ineffectiveness. Their “2007 Sales Performance Report” pointed out several key survey results:
- 18% of a sales rep’s time is spent on cold calling
- 41% of their leads are self-generated even though
- 70% of the reps say their own lead generation needs improvement
And many sales reps consider following up on leads transferred by marketing to be not much more than a cold calling exercise – 53% of them consider Marketing’s leads as poor.
So maybe it’s time to start pro-actively and systematically leveraging that sales network of yours!
All About Referral Selling 
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