Ah the telephone. The thought of cold calls sends shivers up most of our spines. The reality is that we cannot escape the use of the phone. We don’t ever really need to do cold calls, but we do need to make calls period .I don’t care whether they are cold, warm hot or luke warm, the fact is  that we generally need at some point to connect over the phone for business, and so it’s is important that we do it effectively or risk losing business.

Most people who lack success when using the phone to make an initial contact make the mistake one of two extremes. One is to go too much to the side of having a ‘canned presentation’ which we all know will turn many people off, as it sounds so scripted and monotonous. On the other extreme we have people who don’t want to sound scripted so they go to the other extreme by having a ‘wing it ‘ approach, as they hem and haw and adlib their way through the presentation. The lack of cohesiveness and structure most often loses the respect of the listener. The solution to these is have what I call a planned and personalized presentation. That begins with creating a script that has all the necessary communication elements, once learned to memory can be personalized according to your own style and personality.