Need to improve your sales? This formula get’s my vote:

8:00 – 8:30 AM: Sales Training. Read sales material, role-play, or attend a live or on-demand sales webinar. Get fired up and sharpen your skills. MLB teams take batting practice before every game and they earn millions of dollars. Want to be the best and get paid like the best? Do what they do and you will have what they have! It's the Be, Do, Have Theory!

8:30 AM: Check email / have sales meeting. You know you want to see if any new “Hey, I’m ready to Order” emails have come in, so check your over night email and then shut it down until at least 11 am.  Otherwise, you will keep getting pulled away with incoming messages that for the most part, will keep you from the one activity that will help you make sales, and that’s picking up the phone.

Also, have your “accountability” sales meeting with the rest of the group. Commit to how many opportunities you’re going to uncover today and then go do it!

9:00 AM: Email Off. Phones On. 2 hours of solid outbound dialing. No chit chatting about last nights game with your co-workers, mingling around the coffee break room or flirting with the new receptionist. Besides, unless your making quota, you won’t be able to afford a night out anyway.

A LinkedIn contact of mine recently sent me this quote:

“Sell a Bunch Before Lunch and Be a Winner at Dinner”

You know what that means to me? It’s time to get back to doing First Thing’s First.

Forget this entire “cold calling” is dead BS and stop waiting for your social media efforts to bring in orders without you lifting a finger (or receiver) because you'll need to do both well if you're going to survive.

We live in an age where it’s easier than ever to find targeted prospects. So build your list, hit the phones and watch your sales come back to life.

I recently posted this question in a LinkedIn Group and some of the responses are below:

Bill Paul •  None.

John Olsen •  In my youth, selling copiers, we used to form teams to "cold call" on another guys territory, in London, UK. We each, had the objective, of booking 2 demonstrations, for a morning and 2 demonstrations for an afternoon, for the following week. 

Noah Rickun •  If you're a new sales rep, make as many cold calls as you can each day... If you're even slightly seasoned, get out of cold calling and start networking (in person and online) your way to success.

Joseph M Collins •  Today there are so many sources of information that the traditional "cold call" should be a thing of the past. Whether you use Linkedin, jigsaw, Insideview, yahoo, bing, google there are so many places to find information or additional contacts that the good sales professional should be well armed prior to their phone calls.

Michael Pedone •  Thank you Joseph and Sean for your comments. Let me just remind everyone that "cold calling" isn't blindly calling on prospects. That is a "method" of cold calling, and the poorest way to go about it and it has the lowest ROI, but that is not the definition of "cold calling".

Even if you find some information about a prospect through linkedIn, Jigsaw or even if you get a referral from one of your clients and then call that prospect, it's still a cold call because the prospect isn't "raising their hand" at the moment.

Knowing how to do your pre call recon is vital and with today's online tools, sales people can be better prepared more than ever as long as they know how to prepare.