I am currently working on a small project on sales, the first ever I did and I am shyly half through it, therefore I picked up this book for 100% professional reasons.
Wise Me Up to Cold Calling by Shea Heer helps the beginner and mid-level sales professional to learn how to do sales right by approaching potential customers using the right message and attitude. Although cold calling might be considered obsolete in the era of Internet and social media, approaching someone on the phone it is still a doable alternative, based on the very human urge to communicate and connect.
Personally, my biggest issue when started this small project was that I will really turn into a big joke, by fear of not having anything really interesting to say and sometimes not really interested in saying it. However, everything changed when I considered taking every potential contact as a way to connect, not necessarily to sell something but to offer something valuable in exchange. Of course that my PR and communication background helped me to really create some stand alone attractive offer in only a couple of words and a couple of seconds, but before sending my message, those couple of seconds before actually making the call were sometimes painful and Shea Heer is addressing this fear. The fear is usually the result of lack of confidence in what you are about to say. As 'being prepared is half the battle', figuring out what your project or company stands for is very important and must be clarify way before starting the conversation.
Talking about communication, it is equally very important to make everything as plain and simple as possible, especially by avoiding the heavy jargon language. When you send a communication via email, the words are there to be seen and eventually someone can do his or her own Internet research for checking your wording, but when you only have a couple of minutes, firing a conversation loaded with difficult words is a loss at first sight.
The book is simply written, systematic and well organised which makes it an easy read, eventually at the beginning of starting your week of cold calling. I would have expect also a little bit of more writing about how to organised the call calling schedule, for instance by including a follow-up etc. Nowadays there are very efficient management systems that help coping with a big range of calls, such as amocrm.com, not mentioned in the book.
Strongly recommended to anyone curious about sales, or considering to begin a career in this domain.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
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