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Cold Calling or Appointment-Making:
A World-Class Methodology

A couple of years ago, U.S. News and World Report published a list of the Top 50 business books ever written. Books like Good to Great and In Search of Excellence were on the list along with Stephen Schiffman’s book, Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!). Our appointment-making workshop was developed by the “master”, Stephen Schiffman and it does “Really Work!” The reason his book made the list and our workshop so successful is that every sale has to have a beginning. All the sophisticated strategies and plans in the world are useless unless someone gets an appointment with a decision-maker to start the sales conversation. Starting the right number of conversations is the basis of an effective sales process.

Our Appointment-Making workshop takes a step-by-step approach to executing the appointment making phone call. Very few salespeople were ever actually taught how to set an appointment. The first thing we teach is the importance of actually asking for the appointment – using a specific date and time. You would be amazed at how many salespeople make calls and jump into the selling process and never get to the point where they actually ask for the appointment. We have a well developed outline of how the call is to be conducted in a way that leads to getting the appointment. Next, we have a straightforward method for dealing with negative responses. What do you think most salespeople do when they hear “no”? That’s right, they give up. We teach them how to anticipate negative responses, turn them around and go for the appointment.

We also deal with issues like:

• The importance of knowing your critical ratios
• How to leave a message that will get a high number of call backs
• How to deal with “gate keepers”
• What to do when the prospect starts asking questions
• How to handle “voice mail tag”
• How to make a great “referral call”

The techniques we use are professional and effective. The program provides for a high level of practice and participation and the salespeople leave with confidence, knowing that they are fully armed to make the calls and get the appointments they need to be successful.

A DEI licensee recently did a Cold Calling workshop for one of his clients. During the workshop, the salespeople get to make live calls. Here are the numbers for the 10 people:

1,000 dials
225 Contacts
101 Appointments

The ratio was therefore: 9.9:2.2:1. This is the real world. We are intrigued when we read about people’s opinions and views about cold calling or rather the death of cold calling. Most people never really measure what they are doing when they make calls; they just talk around the issue and play around with nouns and verbs. DEI gets you to do it. Again, we grew up in the real world!