Chumps – not champs – cold call
June 6, 2021
By Jerry Bellune
Merrill Lynch has finally come to its senses. Since 1945, the giant wealth management company made its new hires cold call.
It’s like Navy SEAL training and Marine boot camp. Cold calling was supposed to weed out the weaklings.
What it actually does is discourage a lot of bright, capable young people and drive them out of the business.
Edward Jones was addicted to this, too. They sent new hires into foreign territory, calling and knocking on the doors of people who did not know them. We watched too many of them fail and resign.
Selling investments is a tough job.
People must trust you to give you their money, often their life savings.
Cold calling and its modern equivalent, robocalls, are bad for business because:
- They simply annoy prospects.
- They make you look as if you are desperate or too dumb to know any better.
- They give you, your company and your products and services a bad name.
- They are non-productive and a great waste of time and resources.
- They destroy the morale of your people and run off promising new hires.
If you make 20 calls and even a single prospect will talk with you, you are lucky.
Why waste your time and theirs like this?
What should you and your people do instead? We’ll talk about that next week.
We share such field-tested ideas and secrets in our book “Million Dollar Strategies of Maverick Entrepreneurs.” For your copy, email [email protected].
Next: What smart sellers do.
Copyright 2021, The Bellune Co., Inc.
