You Can Still Sell Anything By Telephone!

Butcher, baker, or software maker, we’re well into the new millennium and I’m here to tell you that you can STILL sell anything by telephone.

This seemed like a preposterous boast on my part when I titled my best-selling book, You Can Sell Anything By Telephone!

But after twenty-plus years, nobody has stepped-up to disprove my assertion.

You can do it, if you have a clear voice and can follow directions.

Sadly, these two simple requirements eliminate about 90% of the human population from succeeding.

Those hundreds of thousands of phone folks in India and other countries, despite accent reduction classes they may have taken, still find it hard to come across to us as Americans.

So, check them off the list for failing in the voice department.

But let’s say your voice is clear, intelligible, and appealing to the listener.

Will you succeed?

Not if you can’t follow directions. Let me give you an example.

I have developed predictable and reliable ways to conquer voice mail and secretarial call screening. I promise you’ll get through to your intended business targets at least twice as often as you would by using seat-of-the-pants techniques of your own, or those dispensed by the latest cold calling pro to emerge from the underbrush.

I can put my scripts in front of very capable folks but some simply won’t use them, despite the proven fact they’re twice as effective as alternatives.

I’ve analyzed this hesitancy 100 different ways, but behaviorally, it boils down to the unwillingness to follow directions.

You can still sell anything by telephone if you have a clear voice and are willing to follow directions.

But can YOU meet these simple requirements?

How To Be A Heartwarming Cold Caller

I managed a fellow by the name of Ben at Time-Life Books, and this gentleman was special and very much worth remembering and emulating.

He loved touting our art library, especially to folks such as himself, who were retired or at least of that age.

He’d get on a call and rhapsodize about Monet, Picasso, and some of the lesser-known greats that we sent into homes, one every other month on a 10-day trial basis.

Ben was, possibly, the most respectful telephone sales agent I ever worked with. Polite beyond the call of duty, he would always convey the impression he was a modest guest in homes, and it was a privilege to be speaking to each individual.

Ben would call some of his prospects “Dear” and “Ma’am” and “My Friend,” and you got the impression he could have been a country doctor or a country squire, for that matter.

Because he invested so much time on each call, his raw sales numbers were just about average, but his collections, the proportion of people who agreed to review books and then who purchased them, was beyond compare.

He was the leader in “keepers,” in dollars that came into our coffers, without any need to use dunning letters or evening reminder calls.

Sometimes, as a manager I wondered if Ben was going overboard, especially in sharing the details of his physical ailments with his buyers. But he was just being genuine, making cold calls, but warming hearts, including many lonely ones, day after day.

When the Do Not Call Registry was created, that list of tens of millions of Americans who formally said, “Never darken my telephonic doorstep,” I’m sure not a single one had ever spoken to someone as congenial, knowledgeable, and memorable as Ben.

If more callers were like Ben, and if more firms were like Time-Life, which sought out and cultivated callers like Ben, then that opt-out list wouldn’t have been necessary.

Now that the Do Not Call Registry is coming up for legislative renewal, let’s resolve to be so good at what we do that folks will hesitate before placing their names in that book.

Cold Calling is for Winners, Not Whiners!

Cold Calling for Winners (not Whiners)


It’s about time I applied the wisdom of Peter F. Drucker, management sage and my late professor, to the art of cold calling.

He said:

“We don’t succeed in areas we don’t respect.”

Clearly, this pertains to dialing for dollars, don’t you think?

How many among us truly admire and respect cold calling?

I know I do, because it has made and re-made my career many times over.

It put me through college and helped with graduate school.

It launched my consulting business on a shoestring. I exploited a leased phone line and a few postage stamps to line-up a distribution network consisting of 40 universities and many trade associations and corporations.

It has enabled me to find publishers for several best-selling books which have spun-off hefty royalties, amazing media exposure, and yet more clients.

In fact, I respect cold calling so much that I favor it over all other business development media, given a choice of tools.

But the stark fact is that most people don’t see it the way I do.

One guy said most salespeople would rather have a route canal than cold call. A bit extreme, but this comment helped him to sell seminars on the topic.

A lot of folks suffer from phone fear, also known as call reluctance. They envision such negative outcomes, such a “parade of horribles,” that they de-skill themselves and fail to use even the most rudimentary tools that would assure their success.

I understand their pain, to borrow a phrase.

Still, they’re losers.

And the field should develop and sophisticate itself without paying attention to them.

If they don’t respect cold calling I can’t respect them, or hold their hands, or be an “enabler” of their avoidance behaviors.

I shouldn’t coddle them and tell them fearing human contact by phone is normal and rational, because it isn’t.

People on the other end of the line cannot zap us with a death ray or make us swallow dumb pills. They don’t give us cold sweats, or devise innumerable excuses and rationalizations for not making calls.

We voluntarily disable ourselves by fearing something that is basically so straightforward and easy as to be doable by teenagers.

I know, because I was a 19 year-old at Time-Life Books who became a top salesperson and sales manager.

Yes, it’s time to focus of developing and disseminating a cold calling corpus or articles, tapes, seminars, coaching and consulting products which are for winners.

We can overcome many things, but disrespect is not one of them.