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We all know the importance of cherry picking our prospects, especially before the next sales meeting. We want to look good, right?

How many of us cherry pick our data before we start cold (or warm) calling? If the truth be known we all tend to follow a similar pattern when it comes to this crucial task.

We start with good intentions and after our obligatory coffee to kick start the day we look at our sales database and call the first target. Result, they take the call and show a level of interest that makes us feel we are doing our job.

Next call... Wrong number. Next call... Engaged. Next call... We get blocked by the gate keeper.

Then it starts. We decide not to call the next record in our database. Not sure why, just doesn’t feel right. Maybe they are not going to be interested.

We then scroll to the next one and the note says ‘Not interested’, so why call them? We keep on scrolling, faster, looking for something. Looking for a company with notes that display the words ‘Please call me I am interested’.

We all know that this doesn’t exist. It’s just us wanting to make our day on the phones be a good one. Even an enjoyable one.

Well, you can make it a lot better by doing something before you even pick up the phone. Cherry pick your data first. It doesn’t take long and you can do it in advance, at times that won’t encroach on your calling times - before or after normal office hours or on a lunch break.

If you have a territory, and within that territory you have say 7,000 odd records, in one day of calling you are realistically only going to get through to 40-50 records. So make sure those 40-50 records are your BEST records.

Start filtering those records by location, size, lead source, status. Then filter even further by searching within the history or notes for words like ‘interested' or maybe your competitors names.

Then once you have your cherry picked list of 40-50 names, stick to it. Religiously. Make sure you call every single record as this is your best data, you are not going to find any better elsewhere at this time, so stay disciplined.

Even at the best of times cold calling is tough but by just being smarter and more efficient your results will be positively different.

By: John Perrin