In my role, I get cold-called and pitched. A lot.

I find that ironic, considering that part of my job description is that I’m the one out there cold calling and pitching.

It’s the circle of life, I suppose.

I’ll tell you a secret about the pitches I get: Most of them are awful.

I would go so far as to say that all of them are awful, except that there’s the occasional outlier, maybe once a year or so, that isn’t a complete waste of my time.

Regardless of what the pitch is for or who’s doing the pitching, all these awful cold calls are awful for one reason: Zero preparation.

As an old boss of mine was fond of saying, “Proper preparation prevents poor performance,” and it follows that if you do zero preparation, you’ll get the results you prepared for.

At an absolute bare minimum, you should research the company you’re reaching out to in order to—first and foremost—determine that it’s actually in the market for what you’re selling.

That really sounds like pointing out the obvious, and yet here I am having to put that in print as a lesson to others.

A majority of the pitches people inflict on me have zero relation to me, my employer or our business.

Believe it or not, my LinkedIn inbox suffers from this even more than my email address.

It never fails: I get a request from someone to connect on LinkedIn. I accept, and they immediately message me with an obviously cut-and-pasted pitch.

They’ve done zero research, not even a quick Google search to see if what they’re selling is even tangentially related to what we do.

They’ve done no probing. They’ve asked me no questions. There’s been no dialogue. They don’t know anything about me or my needs.

About half the time, after copying and pasting a generic pitch, they then ask when we can get on a call to “discuss this further.”

Not “if” we can get on a call, but “when.”

Buddy, you haven’t even demonstrated yet why I should get on a call with you.

As the saying goes, pointing out a problem without offering a solution is just whining. So now that I’ve identified the problem, what’s the solution?

It’s easy: Don’t be lazy.

First of all, spamming your pitch at random by email or LinkedIn DMs is the apex of laziness.

OK, so you can make first contact with hundreds of cold leads a day that way, maybe even thousands.

My question is this: So what?

Numbers don’t matter; results do. If you spam hundreds of leads and get no engagement, that was a waste of time.

So do some homework. Research and find out who might actually be in the market for what you’re pitching.

Not to pat myself on the back here, but here’s a story:

Earlier this year, one of our communications brands launched a revolutionary fiber optic DAS (distributed antenna system) product.

I already deal with many industrial integrators, but there’s always more out there that I haven’t met.

So I spent time searching for industrial integrators, made a list and gathered as much information from the internet as I could.

Then I started making phone calls.

Every time, after introducing myself but before I pitched the product, I qualified them. I asked, “Do you install fiber?” and if the answer was yes (spoiler: I already knew that because I did my homework), then I asked, “Who’s in charge of fiber installations on your team, and may I please speak with them?”

Only once I had their fiber guy on the phone did I pitch. I kept it short and to the point. You might recognize the feature/benefit sell: This is what it is, this is what it does and this is why your clients need it.

Out of two dozen calls, want to know how many times I was rejected?

I’ll tell you: once.

That’s not a bad ratio, if I say so myself.

It’s a common refrain that “cold calling is hard.” And I’m here to tell you that it’s only hard if you’re lazy. 

Put in some effort, do some homework, find out who you need to talk to and tailor your pitches. Trust me, it’s much less difficult when you do it that way.

If you do zero preparation, expect zero results. Conversely, you can expect more and better results the more preparation you do.