SDR's: Annoying or Hard Working

I have many rejections daily in cold calling. So I simply ask if I can call back in 6 months to check back in with potential clients.8 out of ten will say to call them back. When I do I slowly build a relationship with them. I don't only talk business I ask how they are doing talk about life and not only business. I find a connection even when they are not interested in my offerings. It takes time breaking walls down with clients. Nobody likes being cold called. So be aggressive on calling and following up yet passive on the sales pitch. Build a relationship first in my opinion.

This is great. I have not been threatened to be sued, but this one guy in New Haven wanted to physically throw me out of his building because I asked him a hard question about taking care of his employees healthy decisions financial protection needs. He got loud, angry, and belligerent. The problem for him was I am 6'3" and 280. Too funny how people react when you ask questions to make them think on the spot. Thanks for this post.

Love this! I resonate a lot with what you said about persistence. Once you're a CEO, having annoyed people until they slam the door in your face. . . and then knocking again. . . is seen as having been fundamental to your success. When you're doing it now as an aspiring CEO, it's annoying and you need to stop. What will keep us SDRs down IF we let it is the negative self talk that can develop after a lot of people shutting us down. So, use the negativity to dig deep and get better. For every time I've been shut down by a prospect, I can think of a handful of conversations with people who have become friends or mentors.

I honestly tend to block out most of the crazier cold call rejections I have. Most of the time, I'll just stay persistent on the phone until they either accept my invitation for a meeting or hang up. The craziest rejection story I do have wasn't on a cold call. My company sent out a marketing email blast done up real nice in HTML, very obviously not an email sent from Outlook or Gmail on a one-off basis. The content of the email is important here because it compared strategic business planning and execution to Sun Tzu's Art of War. This gentleman on the receiving end was a self proclaimed "Marketing Guru" on LinkedIn and apparently this comparison really set him off. He not only responded to me saying that I was an absolute moron for even comparing business to war, but followed that by saying he was going to write a full LinkedIn post dedicated to shaming me...and he DID. Then, he emailed me the link to the post trying to bait me (I can only assume) into responding in some manner. My whole team had a good laugh at this "Marketing Guru" that clearly couldn't distinguish a marketing email from a one-off email. I won't forget that day.

Be aware of your "Why." My interpretation if your motivation for calling prospects is to help yourself and not them. If someone wants my attention it has to be centered around my needs and not your desire to take my job someday or tell me the Aptera story. As a busy human being balancing multiple priorities if I want to hear stories, I will listen to a Podcast of my choosing, listen to my fiance after her day at work, or read a book. Put more time into tracking the complaints you are receiving because I assure it is you and not them. A pattern will emerge, which points directly to your skill development opportunity. I'd be happy to help if you want to reach out directly.