When new to sales, I followed the advice provided to me by both company training and various books and tapes on the subject. That advice was to prospect via cold calling. I was taught to use both telephone and in-person cold calling, or “pounding the pavement,” and that it was the honorable thing that hardworking salespeople did to succeed. Even though it worked for a while, I always had to struggle to make my numbers that way. All too often, I didn’t make my numbers at all, and I eventually became frustrated altogether with cold calling. My first few years in sales were an endless pattern of warning,.
