No More Cold Calling

NOVEMBER 23, 2021

This is the most common mistake sellers make when video conferencing. I really hate my webcam. (Ok, hate is a strong word.) I have a good camera, but I don’t like the way I look. (Unfortunately, the camera doesn’t lie.) I feel totally uncomfortable staring into my camera. It feels artificial and not at all authentic, but that’s the only way to make eye contact online.

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Video Cold Calling Exercises Conference 289

No More Cold Calling

JULY 29, 2021

This broken link is to blame for sales teams’ biggest closing mistakes. “My salespeople can’t close.” This is the frustrated lament I hear regularly from sales leaders. But not closing sales is never the real problem. It’s just a symptom. The problem is that sales reps neglect important activities during earlier stages of the sales process. Unless you address the broken links in your prospecting system, your sales reps will continue to struggle with closing the deal.

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Closing Sales Qualified Lead Lead Rank Lead Scoring 409

No More Cold Calling

JULY 13, 2021

A referral is the best way to get a meeting with the decision maker. There are two parts to the sales process: Part One: Getting meetings with decision makers. Part Two: Everything that happens after that. Referrals help you ace Part One and set you up for success in Part Two. That’s an over-simplification, I know, but it’s the easiest way for people to understand the power of a referral introduction.

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Decision Maker Referrals Sales Qualified Lead Marketing Qualified Lead 401

No More Cold Calling

JUNE 24, 2021

How to ask for referrals and other FAQs. After more than 25 years as an expert on referral sales, I’m still asked exactly the same referral selling questions today. (Maybe even more frequently than before.) I’m going to answer them right now. In no particular order, here are the most common referral selling questions I hear … 1. How do I get over my reluctance to ask for referrals?

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Referrals Outsourcing Services Sales Outsourcing Meeting 256

No More Cold Calling

APRIL 26, 2021

Referral sellers have been relationship-building their way through the pandemic. “Video conferencing is a great way to get face to face with clients. But while it may be as close as you can get to in-person, it’s not, and you’re not. If you have a big-deal prospect or client, you’d better jump on a plane, catch a train, or take a road trip as soon as possible.

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Sales Meeting Meeting Referrals Face-to-face 287

No More Cold Calling

APRIL 15, 2021

Not getting the ROI you expected from your lead-gen tactics? Try this instead. Your lead generation tactics aren’t driving bottom line revenue. That’s a fact. Every sales leader says their #1 prospecting challenge is getting leads in the pipe. They complain they don’t have enough leads, or at least not enough qualified leads. Wait, wasn’t lead-gen technology supposed to solve that problem?

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Lead Gen Sales Qualified Lead Leads Marketing Qualified Lead 397

No More Cold Calling

MARCH 31, 2021

Here’s what you might have missed this year from No More Cold Calling. If you were asked last year how your day was, your answer would have been: “It’s 2020.” That said it all—at least for businesses that were negatively affected by the pandemic. Their clients weren’t returning calls, and budgets were constricted or put on hold. They freaked out. Too many companies accelerated what they knew—send more and more emails—knowing that strategy was never really successful, even in the best of times.

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Referrals Cold Calling Sales Qualified Lead Call-back 371

No More Cold Calling

MARCH 8, 2021

Even slow progress is worth celebrating. Today is International Women’s Day, and I’m reflecting on women pioneers—trailblazers who paved the way for women in sales, entrepreneurship, engineering, law, and other male-dominated professions. And that includes women in my own family. Did I tell you about the washing machine case? My cousin studied law at the University of Southern California (USC) in the early 1970s.

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Hiring Engineering Call-back Lead Rank 377

No More Cold Calling

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

Are your buyers clamoring to talk to you? My phone rang off the hook the last half of 2020. Why the sudden interest in referral sales? A sudden decline in seller access. When the economy shrinks and companies cut budgets, buyers don’t want to talk to salespeople. Layer the pandemic over that economic downturn—well, it gets worse. No one’s in their office, and if you don’t have their mobile number, forget it.

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Referrals Sales Qualified Lead Marketing Qualified Lead Lead Generation 323

No More Cold Calling

JANUARY 14, 2021

Register for Back in The Black Sales TV—first episode on January 19. “The Gatekeeper Died: Why That’s a Good Thing” is the topic for my new, monthly, live Sales TV Show on the Sales Experts Channel. Actually, it’s more like Talk Radio, but on video. Why am I doing a monthly Sales TV Show? The short answer is, more and more salespeople are finding it difficult to generate quality leads and new sources of revenue.

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Gatekeeper Referrals Cold Calling Telemarketing 265

No More Cold Calling

NOVEMBER 26, 2020

This isolating year has been a harsh reminder that human connection still matters. It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., and I’m taking a break. I’m taking the time to appreciate my amazing family and friends, my clients who have become friends, and my remarkable team at No More Cold Calling. Because what I’m most grateful for—this year and every year—is human connection.

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Cold Calling Referrals Conversion Video 358

No More Cold Calling

OCTOBER 27, 2020

What do the following have in common: Referrals, Meetings, Minimal Marketing, and Maximum Impact? They fit together like hands and gloves. Get the referral, get the meeting. You’ve heard me say that many times, but it’s now come to life—with a provocative addition from my colleague Sonia Dumas, who says “ Marketing is Minimal, Impact is Maximum.” Sonia is absolutely right about that, and she even created this unique video that brings the referral message home.

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Referrals Hiring Webinar Metrics How To 317

No More Cold Calling

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Get the latest from No More Cold Calling. I used to think it was just sales newbies who struggled with referral reluctance. They simply hadn’t built their networks or their confidence. When seasoned salespeople started admitting they also felt uncomfortable asking for referrals, I was shocked. I wondered about those in non-traditional sales roles like customer success, CPAs, attorneys, architects, engineers, and consultants—who are now being asked to sell.

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Referrals Cold Calling Sales Qualified Lead Call-back 373

No More Cold Calling

JULY 27, 2020

Research shows cold calling scripts and tricks don’t work, but referrals do. When will sales leadership wake up? They still measure the number of dials and emails sent in a day, when the return on these sales activities is dismal. The last I heard, it took eight to 12 touches to reach a prospect—and that was before the world started working from home.

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Sales Leadership Cold Calling Referrals Lead Qualification 366

No More Cold Calling

JUNE 4, 2020

The sales world just lost one of its wisest women, and I’ve just lost one of my best friends. I wasn’t sure what the answer would be when I made the call. I’d always wanted to visit St. Petersburg, Russia. I was speaking in London in May of 2016, and I figured it would be a hop, skip, and a jump from there. At the very least, it would be much closer than flying from California.

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Travel eBook Call-back Cold Calling 309

No More Cold Calling

MAY 30, 2020

Find out what you missed from No More Cold Calling this month. Working remotely might be great for some, depending on their personality and the number of people quarantining in their homes. But it’s stressful for others and downright overwhelming for many. How can parents even focus with little kids running around? How do couples share workspaces? How are extroverts expected to keep their heads up when they’re isolated from friends and colleagues?

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Referrals Airlines Cold Calling Scale 156

No More Cold Calling

MAY 28, 2020

Please take care of yourself. “ The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of superficial online communications at a time people are hungry for true personal connection.” That’s my favorite quote from David Meerman Scott’s insightful article, “ The 2020s: From the Lonely Chaos of Digital to an Era of Humanity.”. You’ve heard the same message from me throughout this century: Salespeople have become overly reliant on technology to do their jobs.

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Social Media Referrals Cold Calling Social Selling 391

No More Cold Calling

MAY 14, 2020

Do you know where your clients are? It’s not always about revenue growth. Wow, did I really say that? It surprises me, too, but different times call for different approaches. I was struggling with a new way to position referral selling during a recession. I knew companies needed to trim costs across the board. Laying employees off was just a first step.

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Prospecting Referrals Scale Sales Qualified Lead 428

No More Cold Calling

APRIL 16, 2020

Why do you trust some people and not others? Trust is a word we use indiscriminately, but we do not trust indiscriminately. How do we define trust? How do we get our arms around such an emotional word? That’s a tough question to answer, because it depends on the person, and sometimes it depends on the times. Right now, in the midst of a global health emergency and a global financial crisis , we’re all asking ourselves who to trust.

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Face-to-face Call-back Cold Calling Webinar Metrics 434

No More Cold Calling

MARCH 31, 2020

Waiting could be your Achilles heel—plus, everything you missed from No More Cold Calling this month. When the economy slows, the pace of decision making must pick up. Ram Charan , author of 25 books and consultant to CEOs, said that many years ago, but it’s even more relevant now. We need to take action to build our business in these tenuous times.

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No More Cold Calling

MARCH 5, 2020

Your customers are your best source of qualified sales leads. “If your customers aren’t selling for you, you won’t have customers.” Those words of wisdom are from Steve Silver, vice president and research director at Forrester (now Sirius Decisions), when he made his 2025 predictions at the 2019 OpStars Conference. No, I didn’t pay him to promote asking for referrals.

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Referrals Sales Qualified Lead How To Lead Rank 432

No More Cold Calling

MARCH 1, 2020

Don’t ghost people. You’ll end up paying for it. A woman I know from my business group met me for coffee. She wanted to discuss having me speak to her team about referrals. We brainstormed the topic and discussed her investment. She made it clear that she wasn’t the final decision-maker and said she would follow up. I agreed to send her a topic outline and pricing.

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Follow-up Referrals Up-Sell Cold Calling 344

No More Cold Calling

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

Put people before technology in your prospecting. Digital isn’t a sales strategy, hope is not a strategy, referrals are not a strategy, marketing is not a strategy. Sales strategy isn’t yours or mine. It’s your company’s strategy for attracting customers. Not much has changed over the years. An executive reads the latest book and declares the precepts in the book are the company’s new strategy.

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Webinar Metrics Strategy Cold Calling Customer 339

No More Cold Calling

JANUARY 9, 2020

Poor leadership will cost you $3.5 million per sales manager. “ Message to Management: Your job is to get the rocks out of the road for your salespeople so they can do what they were hired to do—sell!”. I wrote that 15 years ago in my first book, NO MORE COLD CALLING: The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust. But I don’t think any sales manager listened, because more than half of reps are still missing quota.

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Sales Management Hiring Cold Calling Quota 390

No More Cold Calling

DECEMBER 26, 2019

I’m pointing fingers at technology … really. We all view business trust differently, but everyone knows that trust trumps price and that trustworthiness is a valuable trait for a salesperson. Yet, only 18 percent of salespeople are classified by buyers as trusted advisors whom they respect. That’s embarrassing, unforgivable, and downright scary. Much of the mistrust goes to salespeople who pitch products , don’t listen, don’t know how to have conversations, and only focus on making their quota.

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Pharmaceuticals Referrals Cold Calling Sales Qualified Lead 207

No More Cold Calling

DECEMBER 10, 2019

There’s nothing like an in-person meeting to close deals. Sales leaders say they don’t need for account executives to travel. Worse yet, salespeople tell me they don’t even need to talk to anyone. Ridiculous, right? I used to think it was because I lived near Silicon Valley, but technology addiction is everywhere. It’s become an epidemic—people typing away and not having conversations.

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Travel Account Training Face-to-face 194

No More Cold Calling

NOVEMBER 30, 2019

Even the CIA didn’t believe the truth when it was right in front of them. How could the CIA miss signals and overlook deception from a long-time work colleague—someone they believed had integrity? A person they knew to be upright, truthful, and who “played by the rules?” And if the best human lie detectors in the world can be fooled, how can any of us laypeople know when someone is telling the truth?

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Referrals Loyalty Cold Calling Fashion 257

No More Cold Calling

OCTOBER 10, 2019

If you’re in data overload, you may not need to be. You’ve heard the phrase: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” I know it’s a disgusting mental image, but there’s wisdom in this metaphor. How often do you take on large projects and get mired down in the details—rather than breaking the project into small, digestible, actionable chunks?

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Cold Calling Referrals Analytics Data 228

No More Cold Calling

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

A bad boss is bad for your health. We’ve all heard stories about toxic bosses, and many of us have had one. But I never realized the impact bad managers can have on our health—for example, that it could make us “60% more likely to suffer a heart attack, stroke, or other life-threatening cardiac condition.” Yep, that’s what one study showed. And there are other startling ramifications.

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Energy Referrals Cold Calling Study 189

No More Cold Calling

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

When you prospect by referral, you treat all customers like gold. I’d had it. I threw my three bananas, ketchup, and plastic mustard bottle on the counter and stomped out of the store. I’ve never had a good customer experience at that market, but this was over the top. I was in the express checkout line at Safeway. Despite the 15-item limit, the man ahead of me had more than 20 items.

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Referrals Customer How To Airlines 189

No More Cold Calling

AUGUST 8, 2019

Do you love communicating with bots? There’s a saying that the future is here. Well, it’s not—not even close. We don’t have a crystal ball, and the future will have stuff that hasn’t even been invented yet. So, how do we prepare our kids for their future careers when we don’t know what jobs will look like, what skills they will need, or what sort of challenges they’ll face that we haven’t even considered?

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Face-to-face Referrals Cold Calling Negotiation 237

No More Cold Calling

AUGUST 1, 2019

Referral makers don’t want your money. They want to know you’re trustworthy. You’re going to pay me how much for referral business? No thanks! When I refer you, I put my reputation on the line, so I need to trust that you’ll take care of my connection as I would. You won’t pitch, you’ll share best practices, and you’ll follow up. You’ll let me know if this was a good referral for you.

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Referrals System Cold Calling Social Media 289

No More Cold Calling

JULY 18, 2019

Your video marketing doesn’t work for me. Salespeople and content marketers, I don’t like watching your videos. I have to put my earbuds in, and that breaks my concentration. Video is not my learning style. I can read and get your point much faster than I can listen. The caption below your video is distracting to me as well. I will, however, read a well-crafted summary or transcript of your remarks.

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Video Face-to-face Consumer Hubspot 228

No More Cold Calling

JULY 11, 2019

Are you “all in” or just dabbling? Most people (especially sales leaders) share the same frustrations: How do I fit everything in? How do I catch up? How do I innovate? How do I balance work and family? There aren’t enough hours in the day. I want to do so many things, and I’ll never get to them all. . We’re busier, more efficient, and more productive than ever.

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Cold Calling Referrals Proposal Energy 247

No More Cold Calling

JUNE 27, 2019

Connections and relationships are what count. Should I accept every LinkedIn invitation? I’m frequently asked that question. It’s a personal choice. Some people do. Some people only connect with people they know in real life. Others screen every invitation; they write to people first and ask why they want to connect. I’m in-between. I view every invitation.

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No More Cold Calling

JUNE 23, 2019

This is a truthful and proven guide for how to ask for referrals. You won’t read that referrals are easy or that all you have to do is ask. What you will read are lessons and insights that I have gleaned from working my referral system with clients for the past 23 years. I’m not braggadocious, but I know what works. I also know there’s a lot of bad advice that’s proffered about referrals.

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Referrals Scale How To Lead Rank 297

No More Cold Calling

JUNE 13, 2019

Do you really need to sleep with your phone? Call or text me anytime. You won’t disturb me. My phone and smartwatch are turned off when I’m sleeping. They’re nowhere near me. They’re in the kitchen charging. There’s nothing so urgent in my business that my sleep needs to be disturbed. We still have a landline, just in case our kids or grandkids need to reach us.

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