Typically, people find pretexts for not cold-calling because they have convinced themselves that they don't enjoy doing it. The most common justification given is ?I'll do it when I have a spare moment?.

From a sales manager's standpoint, the best way to deal with this is to insist on a set number of sales calls every week and using a ?stick and carrot? system to help enforce it.

While there are ways to improve the productivity of telephone appointment-setting the most important thing is simply to do some. Even a poor job is infinitely better than not trying at all. That is the ?secret? to being effective in sales - just making enough attempts.

If the small voice in your head says, ?It won't work?, learn to resist this negative message. Contact with prospects results in sales. The more, the better.

Force yourself to make a big number of calls, say, 40 in a day and you will have positive results. Don't just try two or three. You can't judge the effectiveness of sales work with a small sample. When you have made many attempts you will see that there is a consistent success rate. The actual value will depend on many factors ? how relevant your offer is to the prospects, the price, how much competition you have and so on. But once you have established a base line of perhaps one appointment from 6 calls, you can work on improving that.

Keep good statistics as you go so that you can see how well you are doing. Just making a mental tally is not a good idea, you tend to form a misleading impression. Judge by the real facts. Unless you take notes, you may think that two hours of calls must mean that you spoke to a lot of people, but since interruptions consume a lot of time, perhaps the real number is far lower than you thought.

Suggestions:
1. Set a time each day to prospect.
2. Talk about benefits, not product features to your prospects.
3. Don't leave voice mail messages unless you have made many prior contact attempts
4. Understand your voice mail messages will probably not be returned.
5. Determine if you are speaking to a decision-maker.
6. Ask good sales questions and listen carefully to the answers.
7. Call outside of usual office hours for the best chance of getting through to senior people.
8. Treat the receptionist with care ? they control which calls are put through.
9. You get better results when the Monday morning rush of activities has subsided for your prospect.
10. Make calls; don't let excuses stop you.