I hate cold calling. I know I have to do it. Many days, I don’t have time to do it. When I do have the time I try to do anything else to avoid having to pick up the phone. I hate bothering people in the middle of their day. I hate rejection. I hate leaving voicemails that don’t get returned. I hate having to continually fill my pipeline. What I know is sales never sleeps and it has to be done whether I like it or not. Funny thing is….when I do talk to someone, I’m actually a pretty good salesperson as I am able to talk about the valuable service and the positive results I provide. I had to change the Narrative. This is what I did. I discovered LinkedIn. The people I needed to talk to were on LinkedIn. So I connected with them…..and through Trial and Error, I discovered there was a strategic way to establish relationships with those on LinkedIn that converts into appointments and real conversations. Wow……talk to people and never pick up the phone. I WANT MORE. Actually, I did have to pick up the phone sometimes but boy oh boy the tone of the conversation was a lot different after being connected with someone on Linkedin versus a true cold call. Over the years, I had gotten trained on Sales, Sales Management, and Personality types. I decided that I could create a business helping other salespeople get connected to their ideal targets. I had to create more time. I needed to solve the “I don’t have enough time in the day” challenge. I needed to create more time……so I brought on my friends John and Randy to help me create and drive specific strategies. We created a hands-free process where every single day, my process got me in connection with the exact people I wanted to talk to. My process then sent out a strategic message that was authentic coming from me, that didn’t not sound too salesly, and most importantly it asked for an appointment. The time I would have spent was being done for me. It worked. I created more time. I am too busy and it’s hard to keep up. Today, my pipeline is filled up. Each week I have 3-5 conversations with my ideal targets whom I want to do business with. I do two things each week with my “cold calling process”. 1) I review and approve researched leads. 2) I respond to inbound messages and set up appointments. Each day now consists of appointments, proposals, follow ups from last week’s appointments, and all the customer service and admin work I had always done. I told John and Randy that I needed to slow down. They both told me sales never sleeps and it has to be done whether I like it or not. I like this narrative better.