The answer is yes, according to Frank Rumbauskas, leading sales trainer and author of the New York Times best-seller Never Cold Call Again and several other sales & marketing books and courses.
"There's something in the world of psychology called 'learned behavior' that I discovered during my years of working with salespeople and doing research as to why the most intense cold callers appeared to have negative personality changes," Rumbauskas comments.
What Frank discovered while researching and learning about the science of social dynamics is that years of persistent cold calling -- which is what most sales management continues to advocate -- creates a permanent habit of cold calling, that has two negative consequences:
1. The salesperson makes cold calling such an ingrained habit that their minds become closed to advances in technology that are more effective than cold calilng, such as online self-marketing and business social media including LinkedIn.
2. The repeated rejection of cold calling -- cold calling has a 99% rejection rate on average, and even the best cold callers do no better than 97% on average -- causes negative personality changes. This results in what is known as call reluctance, causing the salesperson to display a lack of self-confidence through their body language and vocal intonation.
"Salespeople communicate an inferiority complex without even realizing it," Frank explains, "because 93% of our communication with others is sub-communication, meaning body language and vocal intonation. The words we say only constitute 7% of our overall communication with others."
If cold calling is such a negative influence, then what's the solution? Anyone who has read Frank's books knows that answer well: "Stop cold calling!"
"With the Internet, social media, hundreds of Meetup networking groups in every city, and even old-school marketing methods such as direct mail sales letters making a strong comeback, there's absolutely no excuse for anyone to waste time cold calilng anymore," he concludes.
