Who is Dominic Lachmuth?
I’m a Sales Trainer and Entrepreneur who has over 10 years of experience coaching teams of sales professionals to recognize their outreach and bring about success through B2B cold calling.
I formerly directed sales training at Groupon and was Head Sales Manager for Google’s daily deal and B2B cold calling branch division.
I now own one of the most dynamic and successful sales training organizations in B2B history, Selling Unleashed.
So you are a cold calling expert. so let me ask you, is cold calling really dead?
For some odd reason, everyone’s asking this today.
I’d imagine it’s come up so much because cold calling has a multitude of misconceptions.
The reality is that cold calling isn’t dead, it’s just evolved.
Cold calling used to be a more barbaric practice, where only numbers and call counts mattered to close deals, all while following just a single script.
People today want to see authenticity, even if it’s a cold call. The point is to initiate it from a standpoint of making it “feel warm”.
When done right, it’s still the single most effective technique for winning new clients and building a book of business for any company out there.
People who suck at it will say it’s dead, while the good one’s know that it comes down to their sales process.
There’s an entire market out there for people that avoid cold calling believe it or not.
Anyone that knows you hate cold calling will try to sell you even more on why it’s a “horrible” practice, plus why you should buy their easy lead gen scheme agreeing that it’s dead.
Ignore those.
People who have no clue whatsoever will also say it’s dead because they heard someone else say so. In reality? Real sales professionals never struggle cold calling, even in today’s business climate.
Why do so many people fail at cold calling?
I could honestly go on for hours as to why this is the case for so many who try to get into cold calling, but there’s a few key reasons I can mention right away just for the sake of convenience.
Most people don’t realize that their attitude, tonality, and behavior is EVERYTHING on a sales call.
Newbies are inexperienced and give off the impression they don’t know what to say or how to communicate it, while plenty of others that try their hand sound just like everyone else, usually monotone and robotic.
What’s key to understand is that these companies are getting dozens of sales calls every other day. If you want to get the boss or decision maker of a company on the phone, you have to form connections and work your way up the hierarchy of that company one person at a time.
Meaning, when Lisa the gatekeeper takes your call, you don’t want to give off the impression that you’re “just there for a sale”. You want to take interest in her and have something meaningful to say so you can form a connection first.
Sometimes it takes multiple calls just to reach the person above the gatekeeper, even if that’s a dozen or more before talking to the person in charge. When that happens, you gotta know how to not waste their time and already have formed a good relationship with our example gatekeeper, Lisa.
If you want to succeed at cold calling, you need to be genuinely curious about the person behind the phone. That single handedly can determine your success on a call today.
Another issue is many sales teams never receive proper training in cold calling. Either their sales leader is too passive in coaching them or too aggressive in tracking sales targets, both of which don’t ultimately help to progress the trainee.
But, most often this biggest reason of all is because they give up early and avoid it like the devil avoids sacred water, never aiming to improve themselves.
You were quoted somewhere else saying, “cold calling is super easy, you just shouldn’t suck”, this sounds extremely provocative.
I still stand by that statement, it’s easy if it’s done right.
Having a sales process that guides you through each call along with knowing how to take control of each one is everything for becoming successful as a salesperson.
In the first few seconds of a cold call, establishing rapport is going to make or break whether or not the prospect stays with you on the phone.
Think about it, when a stranger calls you, you’re wondering “who’s calling me and why”, it’s the same thing for a prospect.
It’s incredibly easy for who’s on the other side to tell if it’s a sales call, aka something they want to hang up on. Some are more polite than others, while some might not even give you the time of day which is directly influenced by how you sound in the first 5 seconds of your call.
The point is to come across different, say something different and say it differently. That’s how you can grab a prospect’s attention and start building rapport with them. This alone will take you halfway through.
Can you share your approach with our readers?
Yes of course, but unfortunately I can’t share it in an interview.
If you want to find out my exact process that I’ve used to close hundreds of deals and coach others to do the same, you can find the absolute best cold calling script for free on my blog.
With this script anyone will be able to be super successful on the phone?
Haha, I don’t think so.
There’s a lot more to it, but this is a solid start for anyone serious about it.
Being an effective salesperson is all about understanding your industry, your product, and the company you’re selling for. In order to go from opening prospects to closing them, you need to be able to guide them from being unsure about you, your product, and your company to being absolutely certain that they want to work with you.
Of course, if we talk about sales we have to talk about numbers and more specifically, rates of rejection.
You’re going to get rejected. A lot.
There’s no way around this except by practicing daily and refusing to get discouraged. From personal experience, at the height of my career and even after becoming a Sales Manager, I was making at least 100 sales calls a day.
Either with leads I generated or prospects I had already closed.
Training is an essential part of sales and you need to be prepared to do it regularly, the same way a world class boxer needs to spar and condition themselves daily. If he doesn’t, he gets ring rust and loses his competitive edge. At the end of the day, sales is just like your own boxing ring. Be ready for obstacles and don’t go down without a fight.
Why are people so afraid of calling a prospective client out of the blue?
People are scared to get in touch with total strangers. They let fear take over and as a result their minds go blank, ruining their chances of closing a sale with a prospect.
When you’ve refined your salesmanship, you’re prepared to hop on the phone with any prospect at any given time, no matter if it’s short notice or not.
This is against most people’s nature, much of our social norms and etiquette is based on being non-controversial and never stirring up conflict. But any true salesperson is always ready to turn a potentially bad situation into a good one. I can’t tell you how many sales calls I’ve prevented from going south just from knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to say it.
This is a really vital point, because in most people’s minds they think that it’s rude to ask for things without being given permission to do so when in reality, it’s not. If you understand that a sales call isn’t always an intrusive thing and can be a positive experience for both parties involved, then you start to realize how easy it is to make them.
Most cold calling courses won’t want to teach you this, because they all rely on teaching the same ineffective methods to keep you coming back for more, keeping you in a helpless loop without making any progress.
You also provide cold calling training, how is your course different from others?
I’ve already touched on this a bit, but there’s plenty more that I didn’t mention regarding just how ineffective these courses really are and how they’re taking advantage of you.
Too many sales courses that I’ve seen try to overpower the client through clever phrasing and manipulative rhetoric instead of providing you actual value.
My cold calling course has a proven track record of showing salespeople exactly how to sound like naturals while giving sales teams of countless business owners’ complete competency over the phone.
The strategy inside is field tested across a multitude of industries and has worked for junior sales people, small business owners, and senior key account managers alike. On top of that, it teaches you how to get your sales team up and running to adequate performance in just a single day.
How important is sales training?
It’s the most important factor of any sales person’s career, without proper training and guidance, I believe you can’t get anywhere in sales and if you do, it won’t be as far as those who received top training programs. If you look at the best B2B sales companies, the numbers demonstrate this every time.
Hard work and training beat talent by far and in my opinion, everyone needs training in order to sell. Someone to point them in the right direction or guide them towards success which is especially important to keep them in a state of encouragement. It should even be mandatory in schools, selling is a skill you can leverage for all of the situations in your life. We live on a planet guided by self-interest and economic exchange.
If you want to persuade a girl to go out with you for a drink, that’s selling right there. Or if you’re working a job and want a pay raise? Guess what, you’re going to have to sell the why behind that directly to your manager. Successfully do that, and you’ve got a pay raise.
Mastering the art of selling is unbelievably important to succeeding in every aspect of your life. The most important skill in sales, though, is to be able to get in front of your customer. That’s why a cold calling course is vital. Sales people that excel at new client acquisition are always the ones who bring home the biggest paychecks and can provide for their family.
Final tips for our readers?
Pick up the phone and just start dialing. It’s cliche maybe, but it works. That’s how I achieved my success and how countless others have too.
Be sure to take notes of what works and what doesn’t and learn from that. Adjust and repeat afterwards, there’s no way on earth that you won’t improve if you constantly reflect like this.
Record yourself and review your calls. I know it might be super awkward in the beginning, but it’s the best way to improve your salesmanship skills.
You can reach out to me for free guidance, however, I don’t have a lot of time to answer questions, I’ll still try to be as helpful as possible.
Thanks for reading!
PS – This is how I efficiently get moolah dropped in my account each Monday.
This is how you can build a fun, easy-to-operate and profitable online business selling products or services.
This is how you efficiently increase your blog’s rank on Google
Leave a Reply