Cold Calling Is The Primal Fear You Must Overcome To Master Modern Selling

[This is a guest blog contributed by a best-selling author, and award-winning Blogger, Tony Hughes. Read more about him at the end of this blog.]

Is this smartphone ball and chain really a communication device? I don't think so. The chiropractors of the world must be rejoicing because homo novus has the worst posture in human history shackled to "the third appendage."

Cold calling should be "warm" calling, I get your pushback. But I disagree. Sales is about real communication and I believe we need a massive return to innocence.

I challenge Sales Leaders to literally "turn off all digital devices." I challenge sales leaders to give reps a headset and a target list with just switchboards to call on for one month straight, pad and pen. That's it!

Why Cold Call? Literally, face your fears and call a stranger in the middle of the day. Like at 9am on Monday morning or 4pm on a Friday afternoon when you least want to! I would challenge you to do zero research and get your wrist slapped. Feel the sting of rejection and let it sculpt you into a stronger person. Yes, research is good but get to the point where you stop caring about the outcome.

Reps obsess over making the perfect call at the perfect time of day to the perfect prospect as if they're about to get in an elevator with Mark Cuban and get 30 seconds to pitch. Mark Cuban ran a college bar and if he had to start all over would be the master of... wait for it... "cold calling!"

If you just master this one skill, your entire career will be transformed from inside out. Focus all your energy only on developing this one mental muscle for 6 months and watch your self-esteem, income, and influence take off like a rocket ship!

Even if you only talk to 2 in 100 people. But you could utilize ConnectandSell and get those contact rates through the roof: just ask Chris Beall who lives life at 1,000 dials a day. I've affectionately nicknamed Chris, Bruce Wayne because he is The Dark Knight of our Social Selling Crazed Digital Age of charlatan Jokers fear mongering to sell multi-level-marketing, social selling schlock to the intoxicated masses.

Chris Beall is cleaning up Gotham just like Batman, trust me.

People are petrified to be human and authentically communicate. There's been a vast introversion bordering on obsession in checking mobile devices 250 times per day. This is not healthy for the human brain or natural. You see couples at fine dining restaurants immersed head down on Facebook (always Facebook) or Instagram. You see it on the train, the endless swiping of iPads of meaningless Us Magazine drivel, living vicariously through celebrities shallow excuse for a hollow existence.

What is sales, really? What defines success? It's about communicating with others. It goes beyond fear of the phone. Maybe you fear something deeper. Like being found out. Like someone discovering you're full of hot air. It's endemic to a virtual society of isolation where no one knows anyone anymore, our whole waking lives constructed of the selfie stick and the humble brag, a Jenga game of polished glass ready to shatter at the sound of a human voice.

It's a call to arms for everyone to just get real. The purpose of social media like LinkedIn was always to connect. It still is and there is a ragtag band of well-intentioned practitioners of the dark art of Social Selling on here who really are doing that. I'd say it's the exception, not the rule, however. People like Koka Sexton and Jill Rowley do it right but they're seldom emulated when I get 200 identical spam messages in my inbox every time I accept a LinkedIn invite.

When I'm reaching out to people, I reach out to the ones I truly believe I can help. I don't waste time on anyone who I feel cannot transact with me. My positive intent and belief in my product is a port in the storm of rejection. This rain of rejection slides off of me like water off a duck's back as I paddle like hell under the surface to get my activity up to the point that I can break through. I don't use scripts or canned responses: I intend to break through and so, I do.

The only KPIs I measure are Skypes, face to face meetings, air plane rides to Melbourne and the States. I don't count dials, emails, InMails or friend requests. After connecting with tens of thousands of professionals on here, it's all a vast digital ocean with boundless creativity and stifling anonymity with plastic gyres of BS that need to be cleaned up.

The mindset is backward. We are spirits in a material world on a quest to drive value by actually interacting. We need to break down the barriers and really get to know each other, break bread and show vulnerability, releasing fears, bias and divisions to build a better society.

In the sales room of the future, we would create! Cell phones would be banned; confiscated upon arrival. Each person would work for about 3 to 4 hours per day off a defined list. The goal would simply be: talk to humans. This is why I advocate for dialler software to print out a targeted list. Purpose: get out of the office.

I think that the real dinosaur concept is the idea that you can sit in front of a computer screen, clicking away passively, and call it sales or call it marketing. It's a misnomer for "social." It was a fleeting meme in the 90's that has passed us by.

Millennials would rather have a cell phone than a car. They should take the car and go meet other Millennials for a hike in the park and go hug a tree. Sales roles should be 70% field. Reps should get in the air to go press the flesh of new and existing customers at conferences.

It's expensive to put your people up in hotel rooms and cover Travel & Entertainment expenses. It's even more expensive to have your reps gain 5,000 connections on LinkedIn, drop vapour into your forecast and see every deal go to die.

The entitled pushback we are getting as sales leaders from future generations of sellers is not something we need to encourage or feed into. It's just like bad, permissive parenting, where your kid loves you and then goes to join a street gang at the tender age of 13. You could easily dismiss me as a Luddite or iconoclast but this is just level one: wax on, wax off. The power tools are for the big boys and girls. Social Media and LinkedIn are a privilege, a dessert after the main course of brown rice and salad.

I will teach you everything you need to know about sales, social selling and how to close million dollar deals if that's what you want. But first let's fix your mindset. Do you love people? Would you love to help a customer? Do you truly believe in your product or service? Do you love yourself? It all starts with heart! Sales is a people business. You must go forth young (and old) ladies and gents and wander out of the shadows of the shire. The most modern technology I can impart to you is the oldest of all: love of others and infinite curiosity!

Not all those who wander are lost. - Tolkien

--------------

Blog by Tony Hughes

Tony Hughes is a bestselling author, award-winning blogger and the most read LinkedIn Author globally on the topic of B2B sales leadership. Tony’s first book is a business bestseller with his second book, COMBO Prospecting, is available on Amazon here. He can be found on LinkedIn and at TonyHughes.com.au and RSVPselling.com

• Topic Participants

• Vinit Tibrewal

  

• Sticky Posts

• As Sales Person, Here are my New Year Resolutions. What are Yours?

  Being a salesperson, I keep learning from my mistakes and have noted a few changes that I need to make in my approach. I take these resolutions going into 2021, hoping to keep it going for as long as possible :) 1. I will not say "Yes, our product has

• Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

  It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence, John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball. Kevin: We followed Richard's orders. John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he? John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET

• Recent Topics

• Zoho Tables August 2025 Update: Faster and Smoother

  We’ve been working behind the scenes to make Zoho Tables faster, lighter, and more reliable. Here are the highlights: Faster Response Times Optimised the way responses are generated. Reduced memory consumption by 20–25%, leading to smoother performance

• Video Upload from app says "unsupported aspect ratio" but is verified to be correct.

  I and my social media person are experiencing a problem where Social will not accept video uploads to Instagram. The error we receive is "unsupported aspect ratio" but looking directly at the file in question we see that the width and ratio both match

• Disposable Email Addresses

  Dear zMail Team, Can you also bring out a few disposable email addresses for each accounts? That way occasional registrations and imminent spam from them can be largely solved right? ---- Deepak Vasudevan http://thamizhththendral.blogspot.com/

• Zoho sheet - Zoho expense

  I want to schedule to create an expense using Zoho Sheet and flow. That is the EMI that I pay on a particular date to the bank and should be itemised, like principal and interest on the loan. Can someone help me in this regard??

• Ability to configure a schedule/shift for each user and/or crew in Zoho FSM

  Hello, In our team of Field Agents, we have different shifts. Some field agent always work from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM while others work the evening shift like 4:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Sometime shift are on weekdays only or on weekend. It would be great to be

• Free webinar: Streamlining customer service paperwork with the Zoho Sign extension for Zoho Desk

  Hello Everyone! Have you been wondering about bridging the gap between digitised customer service and business paperwork? Join our free webinar to learn how you can do this by connecting Zoho Sign, our digital signature app, with Zoho Desk, our online

• Zoho Books | Product updates | July 2025

  Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From plan-based trials to the option to mark PDF templates as inactive, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Introducing Plan Based Trials in Zoho

• Mail Search should allow grouping by conversation like Gmail.

  Having switched from gmail I have found the search function hard to use. Mostly because mail is not grouped by conversation in search. If I search for a word when looking for a conversation had with someone then sometimes 10 emails will come up from the

• Improve Zoho Learn updated article notifications

  I noticed today while updating an article, that the notification users get says "[User Name] has published article [Article Name]..." My feedback to the product team is that it would be really helpful for an end user, if the system notification differentiated

• Safari Support

  Safari, the world's second largest browser, zoho desk does not officially or fully support. That needs to change.

• Can I get images from an "Image Upload" field in a webhook?

  I want to send images from 2 "image upload" fields via a webhook. Is this possible?

• Ticket closure notification - all contacts cc'd on email thread

  Hello, If a client sends an email to our service desk and cc's in other people that work at the same company - so that they are in the loop of the service request. When the we close the ticket, only the ticket owner (person who emailed us - which created

• Inactive account cleanup policy for Zoho Sign

  Zoho Sign reserves the right to delete accounts that are license free and inactive for more than 120 days. The account deletion will be initiated only after the user receives prior email notice about possible data deletion and how to backup the data.

• Missde API documentation for Sales Receipt

  Hi! I noticed that the Sales Receipt endpoint is not currently listed in your API documentation (https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/introduction/). Could you please provide any available temporary documentation for this endpoint, along with a detailed

• Multi-currency in Zoho CRM Forecast and Reports

  As a company we have branches in 4 different countries with as many different currencies. Our Sales Teams would like to work with their local currency as much as possible. The Forecast module using only 1 currency is practically usable only by the sales

• How to select from pricebook when creating a salesorder or quote

  I am creating a sales order and when selecting the Products I do not see any where to select from pricebooks. How do i associate this to my orders?

• Proposal for Creating a Unique "Address" Entity in Zoho FSM

  The "Address" entity is one of the most critical components for a service-oriented company. While homeowners may change and servicing companies may vary, the address itself remains constant. This constancy is essential for subsequent services, as it provides

• Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

  Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these

• I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023

  I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023.

• System default SLA descriptions can't be modified

  The system default SLAs have identical descriptions for all SLA levels, but their settings differ. However, I am facing an issue where I cannot modify these descriptions and save the changes. The content of the description box can be edited but the changes

• Customising Help Center

  Hi I don't think it is possible to add custom pages to help center? We'd like to use this as a customer portal with support tickets, FAQ/Guides, Billing and contracts. Is there any plans to add a feature like this or an alternative way to do it other

• Replies sometimes creating separate ticket

  Sometimes when a customer responds to an email coming from Zoho Desk, instead of adding a reply to the original ticket, a separate ticket is created. This happens even though the response subject line contained the ticket number, and the person responding

• Ticket Approvals - External Users

  The ticket approval option - we need to be able to select external users (Contacts) for approvals. Sometimes we are working with an end user and their boss needs to approve a purchase. For example, working with a cashier on a broken cash register and

• Force Users to Ask Answer Bot a question... First

  End users will always skip talking to a bot. It would be nice if Zoho adopted the standard and forced users to first ask a question to answer bot (or zia in some fashion) and then pass to the agent if it wasn't answered. Options to force the user to speak

• View Answer Bot conversations?

  We are trialing Zia and are experimenting with Answer Bot on our knowledge base. So far so good! Management asks me if it is possible to view Answer Bot conversations, the purpose being to look over its shoulder and confirm that it is working as des

• Mass Email an Account

  It would be nice to mass email an account stating there is an outage at their business or something specific to an account is needed to be mass communicated. Even if it makes a ticket for every Email Out to every contact in the Account. Think: the customer

• Multiple Topics assigned to a single Campaign

  Hello, is it possible to assign multiple Topics to a single Campaign? We frequently write a content to our subscribers that spans multiple Topics and we would like to send it to all Contacts that are subscribed to at least one of the Topics. But it looks

• Bigin Android app update: User management

  Hello everyone! In the most recent Bigin Android app update, we have brought in support for the 'Users and Controls' section. You can now manage the users in your organization within the mobile app. There are three tabs in the 'Users and Controls' section:

• Zoho Projects Fonts and Accessibility missing

  I cannot find any more the tab where I can change the font in Zoho Project. I also checked the knowledgebase and there they have accessibility tab which I am completely missing. Is there some setup I am missing or is it a problem with our account?

• Introducing Version-3 APIs - Explore New APIs & Enhancements

  Happy to announce the release of Version 3 (V3) APIs with an easy to use interface, new APIs, and more examples to help you understand and access the APIs better. V3 APIs can be accessed through our new link, where you can explore our complete documentation,

• Zoho Books Custom Widgets Deprecation Error

  I created a simple sample widget with zet and published it using sigma Both in the Sandbox and Production the Widgets are showing this error

• Problems with PDF files in notebook

  I'm evaluating Zoho Notebook as an alternative to Evernote and imported my Evernote account to Zoho Notebook. First issue is that notes in Evernote that comprise a PDF are turned into a 'group' with a single note page (that has the text from the Evernote

• API (v3) Tasks sorting issue

  We are using the v3 API for Projects. When we gat all tasks, per page of 100 tasks, we get the task info alright. But when we try to sort based on DESC(last_modified_time) we don't get the correct sort order. It is roughly sorted by the last_modified_time,

• Assemblies make my stock go negative

  I am sure this is just the way that we are using this feature, but we use assemblies, a lot. The issue for us is the way that the relive inventory and the fact that it makes our composite item stock go negative. I have added flows to auto assemble and

• User Activity Reports

  I'd like to get data related to user activity.  For example, Login and logout times, emails sent/received, new records created , etc. Is that currently available. I just can't seem to find anything . Thanks, Dave

• Help: Populate “Contact Owner” details into Customer custom fields (for email templates) in Zoho Books

  We want to send invoices on behalf of our sales agents, and include the agent’s name, email, and phone in the email body using placeholders. Plan is to copy the Customer Owner details into three Customer custom fields, so they can be used as placeholders

• Undocumented Books API error message - 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error

  This code sometimes throws this error 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error What does it mean? result = zoho.books.updateRecord("salesorders",organization.get("organization_id"),salesorder_id,sales_

• Partial payments for retainer invoices

  When a customer does not pay the entire retainer invoice there is no way to apply a partial payment. PLEASE add this function.

• Making Tags Mandatory

  When creating an expense, is it possible to make the Tags field mandatory?  I see the option in settings to make other fields mandatory, like Merchant, Description, Customer, etc, but nothing about Tags. Thanks! Kevin

• Mass Update not trigger workflows

  Hi, I have performed a mass update of all records in a custom module using a custom view. I have a dummy checkbox on my module that I turn on or off - hoping to trigger all the new workflows that have been created for that module. However, no workflows

• Next Page