Since the inception of my blog; over 125 unique blog posts, I have on occasion gone off on a rant. I believe this one is long overdue as I have only done two.
This past January, during my annual trip to Mexico I took along two books, in the eight to ten I normally take on holidays, from a very respected and successful business/sales coach to gather some insight on how he does his program and see if there were some ‘nuggets’ that I could glean from his books.
Here is where the rant starts. Can we ALL just stop with the ‘over-the-top’ crazy statements, please? You are creating skepticism in the profession and if people actually thought, instead of taking everything one says as gospel, they to would see how ridiculous some of the claims in that they are utter fantasy bordering on insanity.
In a particular chapter, this person had instructed people to get on the phone and start making cold calls, and they should all have over 25 in 30 minutes. He stated that he would show them how and further compounded the lunacy by stating he would get more than 25 in the next 30 minutes. He did 28. Doing the math, that is barely over one minute per call. Take away the time to dial and for the person to respond, you are well below one minute.
Is there anyone that can tell me how you can have an effective, efficient and productive call in the 30-second range? I could in all likelihood break that if I knew that every call would get me a busy signal or an answering machine, but then is that really a call? There is no way to have a conversation in the limited time in this scenario. Yet, what frustrates professionals like myself who show the proper way to make actual calls, is the number of people that fall for tactics like this.
He can make that number of ‘dials’ in 30-minutes, as I am sure most of us can. As for actually talking to people, I will let you be the judge of that. I have shown some the above chapter and to some people and the comment I usually get back is in the vein of: “That’s impossible.” It’s the quality of the call, not quantity that matters the most.
Recently, I saw a YouTube video with this same individual and Gary Vaynerchuk, someone that I do follow and respect, and this individual was bragging how his organization had gotten a restraining order from a car dealership to get their organization to stop calling them. I will let that sink in. They were bragging about getting a restraining order from a prospect that had obviously said ‘NO’ countless times. When Gary questioned them as to why they were proud and that this was completely wrong the response back was: “Come on Gary, it’s just a car dealership.”
To recap: we have an individual who is a very successful business/sales trainer that states that he can make 28 phone calls in a 30-minute time frame. Further, he is quite proud that someone had to put a restraining order against his business and furthermore, compounds that by stating: “It’s just a car dealership.” Way to build trust and respect.
My advice, before you work with someone, make sure you know what you are getting and that their ethics match yours.