Well as with most seeking to break into the business the looming threat of the cold call lies in the distance like some sort of mid evil torture fortress. Alas though as someone that has done it many times before I have noticed from those that I work with, as well as myself, there seem to be two uniquely different mindsets in regards to it: To use a military/warfare (after all, this is as close to combat as one can get without rifles it seems) analogy, I have broken it down to this: The “Sniper” approach and the “Gunship” approach.

I personally prefer the former. That being, locate a group of people with a common interest. A sport, sports cars, hang gliding, ect, and learn a bit about the activity or interest. At least enough to sound semi competent. Then, find a gathered group of those people in some fashion (easier said than done mind you)…but once you do, you can spend more time on the phone with the person having an immediate commonality (be creative)…and generally can take a more cerebral approach. The obvious logic behind this is a higher rate of close, with less expended energy (hence, sniper).

On the other hand, several friends of mine in a previous business I was in that involved the cold calling, prefred the “gunship” approach. I call it the gunship approach as those that have seen the gunship helicopters come in for a landing circa old Vietnam war footage realize that the gunners just shot wildy at the tree line and HOPED something unseen got hit. Basically a 20,000 rounds of ammo per kill mentality.

My question is to the vets of the cold call game: What is more important…quality of contact/quality of conversation or sheer volume at all costs. Keep in mind the guys that used said “gunship appraoch” were generally very brutally to the point and got frequent FU’s and hang ups in their quests. The reason I pose this question were that as time went on the results of each got harder to judge so alas I seek an oppinion from the gallery.

Thanks guys.

Cheers