I write the book on cold calling!

“If you put enough monkeys on typewriters,” said one of my consulting clients in a seminar with me, “sooner or later one of them will come up with WAR AND PEACE.”

I was predicting that with so many people doing phone sales, telemarketing, lead generation, appointment setting, telesales, phone solicitations, inside sales, or whatever you want to call it; at least one of them would give me a run for my money and become a formidable competitor.

My techniques, popularized in a dozen books, including the bestsellers REACH AND SELL ANYONE and YOU CAN SELL ANYTHING OVER THE PHONE, would be cloned, removed, and with the opportunity to buy pretty decent imitations, the market would disappear for a while. Great master.

Just as he finished delivering this statement, his partner said, “That will never happen. Gary is light years away from the market and always will be.”

Despite the rise of the phone factory, or as it is better known, the call center or contact center, I have never found anyone with my gifts. Specifically, no one has cracked the code of persuading people to buy over the phone like I have.

Scripts are everywhere, as are trained chimpanzees who speak them through their teeth, but they’re nearly impossible to use in a way that sounds like real, spontaneous, candid conversation.

To this day, telephone and “fake” go hand in hand, they are inseparable in the minds of most recipients of calls.

This baffling inauthenticity led to the draconian DO NOT CALL REGISTRY, where nearly 100 million consumers opted not to be contacted. Never in history has there been such a consumer uprising against a communication METHODOLOGY.

You’d think the industry would take notice and invest in more sophisticated techniques. He hasn’t.

If you compare my early books with the current state of practice, you’ll find terrifyingly few people among the millions on phones who have nearly the sophistication that some of us manifested in the 1980s.

Computers have improved, long-distance rates have fallen dramatically, and there are more MBAs in call center management than ever, but the quality of conversations has, at best, gone sideways, not upwards.

Peter F. Drucker, the famous management guru and my professor, made some comments that are relevant:

(1) People fail in areas they don’t respect; and

(2) You can judge the health and trajectory of an industry based on its rate of “brain formation.”

To this day, cold calling, telemarketing, outbound sales, appointment setting, lead generation, phone solicitation, inside sales, telesales, or whatever you want to call it; generates disrespect. Mention it, in a business or private setting, and most people will back off and hiss.

And where are the other working communication theorists, who are engaged in undergraduate and graduate schools in telephone sales management and telemarketing? Where are those well-informed “brains”?

They can not be found.

I wish I wasn’t light years away from the market.

I would much prefer to be on time with products and services that appreciative customers will respect and pay value for.