Yesterday I received an unsolicited phone call from a woman. It turns out she was a B2B cold caller. Here's how it went:

Cold calling woman: Hello, can I speak to the person in charge of your janitorial cleaning services?

Me (the decision maker): We don't use janitorial cleaning services.

Cold calling woman: OK, then. Good-bye.

That was short and sweet; it was the shortest cold call I had ever received. I regularly receive unsolicited phone calls from B2B telemarketers trying to sell me their services. I actually am one of the few that enjoy receiving these phone calls. Although, I never purchase any of the goods or services being pitched, I enjoy hearing the sales pitches. I like to hear everybody's selling techniques. Normally, when I say "no" the cold callers dont stop. They try to overcome my objections. But not this woman.

Im pretty sure that this woman has been told that she needs to make X number of cold calls a day to book X number of appointments to make X number of presentations and close X amount of sales and earn X amount of commission. I think what happened yesterday was she called me then she finished the rest of her X amount of cold calls with no success. No appointments, no new sales. Today will probably be more of the same unsuccessful cold calls.

Too many sales managers in B2B sales advocate cold calling as a way of generating sales leads and new business. But it doesnt work anymore, at least not the way it used to. Executives and decision makers, like me, dont respond to unsolicited sales pitches any more. They know what they need for their business and dont need to be interrupted by a telemarketer to tell them.

What usually plays out when a new sales rep gets a B2B sales job is that they are told outdated statistics about how much they need to cold call to be able to sell and earn a certain level of commission. It sounds so easy and too many new sales reps get too excited. Its not as easy as it sounds. So many new sales reps fail. And, they fail for one reason. Cold calling doesnt work; B2B cold calling sucks!

I suspect "cold calling woman" that called me yesterday had a bad day. I declined her sales pitch. Im sure she made another ten calls after that, with no success. Im sure shell quit her job shortly. And, Im sure its because her boss forces her to cold call.

Cold calling suck!