Tag: Cold Calling

Why do they keep talking?

I have been cold call prospected at least 3 times this week. Yes, I still answer my phone.  Yes, I was born in the 1900s with all the other Luddites. 

And although it is currently not the 1900s, one persistent belief is still alive and kicking in sales.  The innocuous act of filling out an online lead magnet for some information by email has many hidden meanings.

One of those hidden meanings to many business people is that providing one’s email address to a business is immediately equated to becoming a hot lead for their product or service.

Fearing that my interest in their offering may suddenly go cold in 20 minutes, my phone rings and I answer it.  The call begins, most recently, with me trying to comprehend who the caller is and what they are offering.

The telephone prospector, often using a far eastern dialect (or AI) speaks as if we are in the latter part of an ongoing sales conversation.  They seem to believe that I already understand who they are and which company they are representing, because they rattle it off as if it’s a household name with instant recognition.  I am now of course confused at best.

For me, their business is not a household name. I don’t even remotely understand the caller’s name, if they even mentioned it. Their voice speeds up as the call goes further, perhaps trying to get in as many words as possible before I hang up?

30 long seconds into the call, I am absorbing less and less about what they are selling or offering.  They have spoken something like 150 plus words so far, most of which I can’t understand or relate to.  My brain has closed off 90 percent of my listening at this point.

Then it is time in their script to pitch the appointment with rhetoric promising the saving of time or the saving of money, which of course everyone will agree about.  When this approach doesn’t work, they try the alternate choice close on the appointment date and time.  At least 3 or 4 times.

By this time in their process, I no longer understand what they are selling, AND I no longer care.  All I want to do is to get off the phone.

I finally get a moment where I can interject something like, “I don’t have time for this and don’t need an appointment”.

My effort to be polite is of course ignored by the caller, who continues to repeatedly push for the appointment, while also claiming their intent to be brief.

I say no thank you, I don’t want an appointment because I have no idea what they’re even selling.

They finally say something least leaning towards goodbye, but then they have to profusely thank me for taking the time to listen to them and answer all of their shallow questions while they try one more time to set an appointment!

All I can think of at this point is WHY WHY WHY do they keep talking?  Everyone advises hanging up on them, sometimes preceded by an expletive, but with my brain offline, that’s easier said than done.

It’s 2025, aren’t they tired of all this talking yet?  I sure am.

Thoughts About Recipients’ Experiences When Receiving a Cold Call

The following is from a conversation between a fan of HPS and the author, and is published here with permission.

Hi Carl

Though I’m now retired I absolutely admire your HPS system, so enjoy following your posts etc including the latest “calling businesses/leaving messages”.

May I respond to this one with a thought.  Do your students have to consider what their recipients experience when they cold call?

My pet cold calling irritants as a recipient are when I hear their obvious sales pitch.  It instantly makes me immediately disinterested.

My pet hates are:

  1. “How are you today”
  2. Speaking their intro too quickly just to get it out of the way
  3. “I’m calling to save you money on your . . . Phone/energy/other “
  4. Thinking I should be interested in that!

So I wondered what others don’t like to hear when they get cold called.  Might help them understand what needs to be removed/modified.

Ian Clark

Hello Ian,

What you say makes a lot of sense. 

High Probability Selling was not created from any logical reasoning.  Jacques Werth observed and documented what the top producing salespeople were actually doing, regardless of whether any of it made sense or not.  So he discovered HPS.  He did not invent it. 

Most of your pet peeves are things that really effective salespeople already avoid doing.  So we teach our students to stop doing those things.  Not because it makes sense (even though it does), but because it works better. 

I find that making sense of something is useful, because it helps me remember details, but making sense doesn’t make an idea any truer. 

Aristotle had an idea about falling objects that made perfect sense (and still does).  It was so perfect that no one thought to question it for almost 2000 years.  Then Galileo actually tried it out. 

I think selling is a little bit like that.  Traditional selling makes a lot of sense, until you look at it much more closely. 

I’d love to put your thoughts (and my response) in an article on the blog.  May I have your permission to do that?  And if yes, do you want to be identified in that article, or not? 

Carl Ingalls

Please feel welcome to add comments with your own pet peeves about what salespeople say and do when they call.