A sales call is either cold or hot, but never “warm.” Do you subscribe to the “warm call” fantasy? The most recent version goes like this: You’ve researched prospects on social media, identified trigger events, gathered information from social intelligence, and checked their websites and blogs. You have mutual connections on LinkedIn. Now you send them purposeful emails making the business case for why they should talk to you. You really believe you’re not cold calling, because you know all about the prospects and you're connected on social media. You’re sending “warm” emails, right?

Wrong.

There’s no such thing as a warm email, a warm phone call, or a warm knock on the door. If you don’t have a referral introduction, your lead is freezing cold—even though you mistakenly think you've avoided sounding like a pesky telemarketer.

LinkedIn Connections Are Not Relationships

The “connected” logic plays out like this: If we’re connected to someone online, we have a relationship. Nope. You have information, not a connection. Any attempt to reach out to someone who doesn’t know you and doesn’t expect to hear from you—whether by phone, email, or in person—is ice cold. There’s nothing “warm” about it, even if you do know the same people on LinkedIn. Unless those mutual acquaintances provide you with referral introductions, you’re cold calling—the bane of a salesperson’s existence.

Would You Give Up Sex For a Month?

In a Reuters survey of 1,226 sales professionals, respondents ranked the prospect of making cold calls for a week as more unappealing than giving up sex for a month. The only activity they found more unattractive was getting a root canal.

Whether you’re buying lists, sending direct mail, dropping off brochures at company headquarters (yes, that still happens), or sending spam email to people who don’t know you, it all amounts to cold calling—which only wastes your time and your company’s money.

All the social-intelligence tools in the world are useless without personal intelligence—that is, the ability to build and nurture relationships, and to leverage those real-life connections for referrals.

Referrals Are HOT, HOT, HOT

When you receive a referral introduction from someone your prospect knows and trusts, you arrive at your first meeting pre-sold. The prospect knows who you are, that you are trustworthy, and that your solution is valuable. Not only do you get the meeting, but the client actually wants to talk to you.

Referral selling is the only prospecting strategy where sales reps:

• Get the meeting at the level that counts
• Shorten their sales processes
• Incur no costs of sales (except, perhaps, the price of lunch for two)
• Convert sales prospects into clients more than 50 percent of the time

 Why would you waste time cold calling, or fooling yourself into thinking you’re making warm calls? Get that referral, ace out your competition, and seal the deal.

Joanne Black is America’s leading authority on referral selling—the only business-development strategy proven to convert prospects into clients more than 50 percent of the time. As the founder of No More Cold Calling, Joanne helps salespeople, sales teams, and business owners build their referral networks, attract more business, decrease operating costs, and ace out the competition. A captivating speaker and innovative seminar leader, Joanne is a member of the National Speakers Association and author of NO MORE COLD CALLING™: The Breakthrough System That Will Leave Your Competition in the Dust. To learn more, visit www.NoMoreColdCalling.com, email joanne@nomorecoldcalling.com, or call 415-461-8763.

Learn more tips to master cold calling in our Salesforce ebook at the button below.