cold calling five common pitfalls to

I receive many sales calls, most of which are cold. I'm not opposed to receiving cold calls, but I have noticed cold callers often use the same ineffective techniques that do little to convince me I should listen to them. So here is my personal top-five list of pitfalls cold callers should avoid if they want to get my (and I'm guessing everyone else's) attention.1. Fake pleasantries. I once had a Croatian friend ask, "Why do you Americans always ask me how I am when you don't mean it?" I could ask the same question to cold callers. Almost every time I pick up the phone from a number I don't recognize, I hear somebody I don't know say, "How are you?" I realize they don't really care, and wrse, I don't like that I have to come back with a response that is just as fake. So right off the bat, I'm on the defensive.2. Not telling me where they got my information. I worry about privacy, and yet my contact information is right on our business website. So I expect to get calls from people I don't know. However, unless someone tells me how they got my information, it still feels a little unsettling. I feel much more at ease if they say they got my information from my business card, our website, a trade show I attended, etc.3. Not listening to me. I like people to ask me questions, as long as they are genuine ones. That gives me a chance to help them understand whether I'm as good of a fit for whatever they are selling as they thought. But asking questions and genuinely listening to my answers are separate things. If they interrupt me when I'm speaking, or only ask questions by rote where it is obvious they don't care what my answer might be, then I can tell they care more about their product than they do me and my business.4. Knowing nothing about my business. I assume that if someone goes to the trouble of calling me to tell me why a certain product or service will help my business that they know what my business is. After all, I've spent a lot of time putting that information on my website. So if someone calls and has to ask about my business, and it is clear they haven't done any preparation, I'm not as forgiving with my time.5. Assuming I'm the person they should be talking to. I may not be the right person to talk to. It is nice if they let me know who they are hoping to talk to, and ask whether I'm that person first. It is frustrating to have to listen through four scripted paragraphs before I finally have a chance to say they should be talking to someone else in our company.

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