Cold calling is LITERALLY the worst. And I’m talking about both ends.

You’re a business owner or entrepreneur. You know those days where you are so freakin’ busy with running your business and you have absolutely no time for anything else?

Those are the days you wish you could stop time but you could keep going. 

Those are the days you wish you could go back in time and do things more efficiently or not waste time on the dumbest stuff. 

Right?

Well, I had one of those times the other day where everything seemed to hit me all at once. Employees needing me every single minute. Clients needing me every single minute. In addition to that, I’m neck deep with client project work that was due yesterday!

Then I get a phone call.

It was a cold call from an insurance agent trying to sell me insurance.

Now, usually these things don’t bother me. I just say “no, thank you” and move about my day. But not today. Today was the perfect storm and he caught me at the worst time. The last thing I wanted was to be hit with a cold call.

Don’t get me wrong. I was polite to the guy but inside my head I was thinking that this guy was the cherry on top on one of the busiest days ever.

Fast-forward…I allowed him to do a short pitch on the phone and then I politely said “No, thanks. We’re good on insurance for now.”

Then I got the lunch pitch.

He offered to buy my lunch at a sandwich shop so that he “could get to know me” and tell me how his company could help me.

Long story short…I declined his offer and ended the phone conversation.

So that inspired me to write this post and tell you the reasons why you shouldn’t cold call if you’re thinking about doing it.

So here are four reasons why you should never, ever cold anyone to get a sale.

Reasons #1: You’re asking me to “marry you”

Sales and marketing is similar to dating. There needs to be a trust factor in order to buy.

Think about it. When you start dating someone, you need to go on a few dates to get to know the person first in order to decide to keep dating them.

After a few dates, you decide to date them exclusively.

After dating exclusively for a while, you get to know their family.

After that, you get engaged.

After that, you get married.

After that, you have kids and grow old together.

Business is the same thing. 

Think of marketing as dating. Sales is when you ask for the engagement. And doing good work and having your client as a loyal client is the marriage and growing old together.

[Side note: Have you tried THE PERFECT SALES FOLLOW-UP SEQUENCE?]

Reason #2: Business owners are busy as sh*t.

Yes, as an entrepreneur, I have to deal with everything in my business. 

Business owners wear 17 different hats.

The business owner hat.

The sales and marketing hat.

The financial hat.

The HR hat.

And 13 other hats.

They don’t want to be bothered by a time-wasting cold call. Trust me on this one.

Reason #3: A lunch doesn’t justify a pitch.

Business owners and entrepreneurs value their time more than money…usually. They will pay a lot of money to save a little bit of time.

So when this dude pitched me to go eat lunch at a sandwich shop so that he could pitch me, I just rolled my eyes.

When clients hire me to do a full-day consulting, I charge $3,000 for the day. I don’t usually break things up by the hour, but for this example, we’ll do that. So for a typical 10-hour day (be honest, entrepreneurs work more than 8 hours), I generate $300 per hour in revenue.

So for this guy to pay for a $6 sub sandwich for an hour…it doesn’t quite compute.

Reason #4: It just puts everyone in a bad mood…and it disrupts

This is on both ends. I’ve never met anyone who actually enjoys cold calling. So it puts the business owner in a bad mood because it disrupts their day.

I don’t know about you, but the smallest things that disrupt my process can ruin my productivity…this includes a cold call.

For the person doing the cold calling, it’s rejection. Nobody likes rejection. And it’s just a negative feeling. Why would you keep doing it?

Those are the reasons why you shouldn’t cold call anyone.

One of these days I’ll write a post on the alternatives to cold calling. But for now, this is what I feel like writing about.

Cheers,

from the desk

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