Anyone experiencing burnout in sales?

First of all, I"m only 1 month into my new job but i can say after 3 weeks of prospecting, cold calling, making an average of 50 - 75 contacts a day and getting shot down all day, I'm getting burned out. This isn't my first trip in to outside sales but it's the first type of sales where I've had to make so many contacts just to get an appointment. And actually, this is what's happening to be more exact. I call 75 leads cold. 5 will be people willing to give me time but they want me to call them the week after, or the following month, or in a coulple days. Now I've had success following up with these leads and securing an appointment after I call them at the requested time, but still, I'm not sure if that counts in the ratio of appointments to contacts. Anyways, I busted out of the gates with a nice start falling just a few dollars short of quota my first week, but since than have had alot of trouble closing anyone. I've had appointments, and I have plenty of good prospects who have shown interest but have not been able to get them squeezed out of the pipe line yet. Actually this week i'm like only 7% of my quota, i'm ready for the weekend and I'm just tired of calling. Today and yesterday and I was so tempted to just drop everything and call it quits around 3:30 or 4, i didn't b/c I have better work ethics than that. How do you all handle times like these? Are there every times when you just feel like your the only not producing even though your pounding the phones and doing the best you can? I think I will get sales, but my pipeline is just filled up with prospects that are on the fence and wouldn't close on the first call.

What training have you had in cold calling?

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZBroker

What training have you had in cold calling?

I've had quite a bit, been to seminars, read countless books, latest one being "never make another cold call" by George Walther. They help but I also find alot of the advice is not very practical. I've tried to answer objections over the phone using the so called "proven methods" with prospects only for them to hang up on me while i'm talking. With that being said they do help to answer the objections when it is a valid concern and a prospect isn't just trying to get me off the phone.

Here's an opening i've used latley.

" hi mr prospect, i saw that you are running an ad in the green sheet, i realize you must be doing this to get some more phone calls correct? I wanted to come by and talk to you about ways i can help you with this through some yellow page advertising"

I'll get maybe 1 or 2 out of 10 with that. Still some people simply ignore my first question about trying to get more phone calls and simply say, "not interested" click. I know this is part of sales, and thats not what is frustrating me so much as just have such a god awful week.

Who is your ideal prospect and what qualifies them as so?

What is your product or service?

What training has your company provided for prospecting and selling?

Is cold calling standard procedure for your industry or do most agents use a different prospecting method?

Hi salesrocket
I think most of us have short periods of burnout. I've been selling for just over two months and each time I have a setback of some kind, I feel that way. I think about it for a little while and then I realize how much I want this to work and I quickly have my sales energy back.

If your burnout comes and stays for a lengthy period of time it could be telling you that you aren't suited for this position. If the burnout feeling is short lived like mine then I think it is a pretty normal part of the ups and downs of selling.

I'm not the least bit experienced so what I just said may not be worth the time it took to type it but it's my two cents worth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AZBroker

Who is your ideal prospect and what qualifies them as so?

What is your product or service?

What training has your company provided for prospecting and selling?

Is cold calling standard procedure for your industry or do most agents use a different prospecting method?

Product is Yellow page ads.

They provide a weeks worth of general training at the beginning.

Cold calling is pretty standard, just some people do it on the phone and some people do it in person. The ones that are there for a long time have repeat customers so their cold calling is not as frequent. The new people must cold call to grow their business.

see if you can do some further research on the companies before you call on them,
where their business is coming from?
how they can benefit from your product? etc....
don't use typical sales talk like i realize you must be doing this to get some more phone calls correct?
how about what areas of your business do you struggle?
what areas of oppurtunity do you think your business can improve?
as far as burnout, we all experince it.....

I'd try something like this with each call;

"Hello Mr Prospect, my name is ______________ and i'd like to talk to you about a way to generate more customers for your business. Do have a minute now or should i call you back later"?

If they can talk now then i'd say;
"I'd like to call by and spend 10 minutes showing you some of the most effective ways my company can help you to generate more sales.

"If you don't want to do business then i'm sure you'll find our meeting of real value.......you'll definatly get some ideas that you could use in your marketing at the very least"..............

It'd be important that you spend some time getting to know the business and target customers and have some supportive material with some of the best ads in your publication.

Hope this helps..........

Salesrocket,
The one most important thing that I have learned in my experience as a sales professional (or even just as a person), is that energy....is contagious. People have the tendency to respond unconciously to peoples energy levels, and most certainly catch onto whether it is positive or negative. I have in my own experiences have found that people will be enthusiastic over anything you could speak about even before they know what you are speaking about, this...is where I believe you might find at least part of your answer (assuming the rest of it is contained within your other responses).
I have had experience in cold calling, and I will admit that it is not the most glamorous of the tasks sometimes required for success in certain areas of sales, and I found that if you get into the mentality of "not trying to sell anything..." and end up more just "informing the prospect on a person to person (not salesperson to person) basis....then you will find that people will respond to you more humanly and hear what you have to say.
It has been my experience that people know or like to feel like they are the expert in what "they need", and if you approach them on an informative level then you broaden your chances of them listening further (EVERYBODY can use more information).

Just a thought I might put out to you, this philosophy has most certainly found me a great deal of success.

"Instead of approaching the situation as if the prospect were to do you a favor of accepting your offer, but if you just change it around.....you will approach the situation as if you have a favor to pay them. That.....creates value in the eyes of your potential customer and invites them to listen further."

-David Reilly
This is a quote you can apply in principle to ANYTHING and I can promise you that you will find a greater amount of success!

Anyone experiencing burnout in sales?

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