- Capstone Calling
More Qualified Leads Via the Art of Distraction
I’m going to make a bold statement that likely no one in the sales world has ever made before this moment: #ColdCalling. Is. Tedious. I know exactly what you’re thinking right now; you’re thinking I just blew your mind at the profundity of this novel declaration. I’ll go ahead and let you take that in for a minute.
Now that you’ve wrapped your mind around this novel discovery, the next question is: how do you combat the tedium of spending hours on end searching for #qualityprospects? At its core, this issue is really a problem with time. It’s not that you don’t have enough time to get cold calling done (although if this is a problem, see below) but more often it’s simply figuring out how to make 10 hours/week of prospecting not feel like 300.
A coworker of mine uses a timer to stay on task. She’ll set it for 45 minutes, make as many calls as possible, and then stop for a 15-minute break. I’ve tried it, and it wasn’t my cup of tea. I find myself incessantly staring at the stopwatch, becoming delirious and soon believing the watch has morphed into a black hole of despair where all time ground to a halt.
Instead, I found my own solution to stay on track and not hate the experience – baseball. Here’s how it works:
Find a baseball game on the radio. Clearly it needs to be a day game (lucky for me I’m on Cubs fan).
Do nothing but make solid, focused calls each half inning.
After every half inning, take a break. I suggest standing up and wandering around, maybe doing some quick yoga stretches, but let’s be real – you’ll probably just end up on Facebook.
If your team gets a homer, you get the next half inning off as an extra break.
If your team makes an error, you skip your next break and continue to make calls.
The 7th inning stretch: take a break from calls the entire inning and spend that time on emails/research.
If the game goes into extra innings, that equals extra calls.
If the game is shortened by a rain delay well, lucky you, you get a reprieve that day.
The point of this is two-fold: not only does it keep you on track but it also distracts you just enough to keep your focus off the clock.
Of course you can substitute other distractions in place of baseball, but choose wisely. Attempting to distract yourself with some true crime in the background could lead to a slippery slope of abruptly screaming, “IT WAS THE MOTHER’S BOYFRIEND, YOU F***ING IDIOT!” into a very confused ear.
Still not fully confident you can (or want to) stay on task in your business development efforts? Shoot us an email at info@capstonecalling.com!