1. Cut through the biggest objections in the shortest time.
2. Identify how that time would be best spent, both for us and for our prospects.
3. Make tons of friends out of total strangers.
4. Turn most prospects into customers.

Want to ring up sales from cold calls? Here are my top ten reasons why I might not want to talk to you if you make your next cold call to my phone number (just like everybody else you are trying to get your foot in the door with). If you study these reasons, you can overcome my objections. Then you can sell me and all of the other KDMs (key decision- makers) who have ignored you, hung up on you or otherwise shut you up. Here goes:

10. I am often too darned busy to actually listen to what you are saying.

The mail is backed up, and I need to spend time with three of my own sales people who need sales training advice, concessions, alternatives, solutions and other creative thinking so they can close deals.

Given the choice of spending my time to help you sell to me, or using that time to help my own sales people sell our stuff to others, what should I do, talk to you? Don't fret. Just call back when I have more time.

9.You're pitch is too boring.

Think about it. You finally have the good fortune to get through to me, or to anybody, at a time when I am not three phone calls and two meetings behind schedule. So what do you say to turn me on? NOTHING.

The truth is, I do give most telemarketers more time than most people do and I even prompt the incompetent ones, which sometimes makes our staff fall down laughing. One morning, our receptionist was downright hysterical listening to me coach an insurance salesman who had called, but had nothing to say.

Salesman: "Mr. Rosenzweig, I'd like to come by and introduce myself."

Me: "Why?"

Salesman: "I represent XXXXXX Financial Services and I would just like to come by and introduce myself."

Me: "We own a financial services company (It's true. My wife Ronna, in the very next office, manages around $75 million). I may not be your best prospect."

Salesman: "Well, I'd like to come by and introduce myself anyway."

Me: "Why? What can you do for me?"

Salesman: "I don't know, but I'll be in the neighborhood."

Me: "You'll be in the neighborhood? I appreciate your persistence. I really do. But, not to put a fine point on it, I don't have a lot of time and you really need to tell me what's in it for me to take the time to meet you." (At this time, Lori, who has been sitting at the conference table in my office, is about to split a seam from laughter).

Salesman: "I can't say what's in it for you, but I'd like to come by and introduce myself."

...And on it went, until I had to get on with the day. Face it. I gave him every opportunity to give me a reason to get that appointment, but he didn't. He blew it.

8. You sound too mechanical - not human, not warm.

You don't sound like someone I might want to get to know, nor anyone I would care about. If you want me to buy from you, you need to sound likable.

Don't think, for a minute, that telephone personality is something you are born with. It's not. Telephone personality is no more complicated than simply this: Imagine what your called party looks like and establish a conversation with him or her like you would with a stranger at a cocktail party.

If you take the time to visualize me as more than a phone number, I will feel it and I will not visualize you as someone sitting in front of an automated computer list dialing for dollars. It's the start of genuine communications.

7. I'm really the wrong guy for this meeting.

I may own the company, but I may NEVER get involved in the decision making for what you sell.

This is hard to convey to most sales people, but it's true. I learned this very hard lesson the very hard way... not once, but twice, while training a new business associate who had great "business connections" four years ago.

First, we met with the owner of an enormous import business who turned to his CFO and said, "all things being equal, I want these boys to get the deal".

We didn't get the deal. I asked the CEO what went wrong. "My CFO wanted the other guy and I can't override him if I want to work with him." We knew the owner, but he was the wrong guy and we didn't have enough of a clue to consider working on the CFO.

The same thing happened one month later. Our new associate had a great list of friends who were happy to meet with us, but who would never step down to the decision-making process at our selling level.

6. I don't know if I can trust you.

I have had hundreds of people cold call me on the phone ...and that's only this week. Who are these people? Why should I trust any of them? Why should I take the chance?

Nothing overcomes my fear like a good set of references. Testimonials impart credibility to give me comfort that you might be OK.

5. You're not offering enough free stuff.

What? You don't think I am so shallow that I would ignore everything that is really important about running a business to glom free trinkets?

Get real! Free stuff gets everybody's attention. I give away a great, but inexpensive six-inch ruler that measures floor plans in floor plan feet. They love them.

One year, Microsoft stole the show at COMDEX when they gave away thumb sized little white furry toys, which they called "Microsoft mice". Try this:

You: "Let me bring over one of these very handy letter openers and tell you about our wonderful new software."

Me: "OK."

4. You don't tell me anything that is new and informative.

New York City has three all news radio stations which keep us tuned in even on days when there is no news to listen to.

We have this great compulsion to be informed. Men suffer from this more than women, but women will listen, also, if they feel that they are learning something that isn't generally available. If you want to be really interesting to prospects, read the Wall Street Journal before each session on the phone.

3. You're not compelling.

There's no story line to your call. Consider how much more engrossing (and entertaining) you might be by simply telling me a story about your company, your customers, you, how you got into this business, etc.

The story has two benefits to both of us. It is a delivery vehicle for items four, six, eight and nine. Also, if the story is well rehearsed and entertaining, it keeps even the busiest Exec on the phone until you get him or her to agree to the appointment.

2. You're no fun when you're working.

No fun is depressing, and depressing phone calls are destined to fail. People who have fun on the job sound happy, creative and fun to be with. How can you hang up on a fun person?

In the spring of 1978, my company got a phone call one Wednesday at about 5:30 PM and there was nobody left to answer it but me. The caller worked for a hard-driving CEO who wanted her to get lots of bids to move their phone system from Manhattan to Stamford, CT.

"I hate bids" I told her, ten minutes into a very irreverent conversation. "How can I rip you off if you compare me to twenty other guys?"

"Aren't you ever serious?" she laughed.

"Never after five." I said. So, we met at her office the next day (at 5:30 PM, incidentally).

We signed the deal and I got to move their very large phone system. Thus is the power of fun.

And finally, the number one reason why I may not want to talk to you when you make your next cold call to my phone number:

1. You don't sell anything that is useful to our company.

There is nothing as dumb in business as trying to get an appointment with someone without first qualifying them as a prospect for what you sell.