I am constantly amazed at how often sales training programs, especially those involving cold calling, fail. Not only do they fail, they often fail quickly and spectacularly. Think back to the last cold call training session you have attended. How did the training go? What activities did you undertake? How outside of your comfort zone did the instructor take you?
Although he is not known as a bastion of intelligent quotations, arguably my favorite quote is from boxing champion Mike Tyson. Mike once said, “Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth.” A more appropriate quotation for life I cannot think of.
This quotation is one of my favorites because I think it is applicable to all facets of our life. We have a plan for how our marriage is going to turn out, until something completely unexpected happens and alters our sense of things. We have a plan for how our day at the office is going to go, until an emergency arises and throws us off of our game.
Nothing that I have experienced previously in the world of sales training has prepared me for success in this field quite like the way I train my clients. The reason my business has grown by leaps and bounds is not simply because we deliver incredibly good results very quickly, but our clients emerge from our training ready to tackle anything, because we have forced them from the comfort of the familiar and have replicated live action situations.
As I have gotten older, I have grown to appreciate more and more the men and women who currently serve in our Armed Forces, as well as those veterans who have sacrificed their over the years for us. Why do you think those brave souls defending our freedom are so good at what they do?
Imagine a group of new recruits, eager to serve our country, arriving for boot camp on the first day. They are ushered into a classroom where a drill instructor, using a white board and PowerPoint presentation, teaches them on hand-to-hand combat, effective military techniques and maneuvers, survivorship strategies, and how to disarm a bomb.
Following three months of intensive classroom study, they graduate, ship off to the Middle East, and are now responsible for taking the fight to the enemy. How well do you think they would fare if all they knew of combat, military strategy and survivorship skills were taught in a classroom?
They are as good as they are because their drill instructors replicate live combat scenarios, expose them to intensely stressful situations, and push them to the breaking point to ensure that they can hold up in these various circumstances.
Although we certainly don’t take it to that extreme, our methodology is similar. Rather than just giving our clients a script, we roll up our sleeves and make cold calls with them. Rather than just role playing, we expose our clients to real life rebuttals in a situation simulating a live cold call to see if they can think on their feet under a certain degree of distress.
Role playing with someone who is unafraid to challenge you forces you out of your comfort zone and allows you to realize that you have skills you did not know existed. By simulating the stress and anxiety of a cold call, it forces you to make a difficult call under stressful circumstances to foster muscle memory, so your mind does not go blank and you are not at a loss for words when you face a challenging person on the other end of the line.
The next time you sit through a sales training session, consciously think of how often this person is taking you out of your comfort zone, replicating a real live situation, and forcing you to dig very deep to successfully complete an assignment, task, or challenge.
At The Cold Call Coach, we push our clients to be the absolute best sales people they can possibly be because, unlike certain other trainers, we know that deep down, there is an expert sales person waiting to emerge. We challenge our clients by replicating real, sometimes stressful situations, so they can get used to cold calling in less than ideal circumstances.
If you are ready to take your business to the next level quickly, realize more professional gains that you ever thought possible, and, in the process, become a much better sales person, you owe it to yourself to give us a call.
Are you ready to get punched in the mouth?
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