Cold Calling is an Outside Salesperson’s
Highest Form of Adventure.
When’s the last time you waltzed into a business wearing your bulletproof cold calling vest? Rejection is never fun. That’s why outside salespeople can usually find something “more important” they need to do than introduce themselves to a prospective new client.
Bob Lepine, Ron Pittman, LeAnn Webber, Malcolm R. Peavey and me formed The Biscuit Club in Tulsa 2 years before Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall made The Breakfast Club into a movie. If our sales manager had asked us to do it, The Biscuit Club would never have happened.
“It’s time for a biscuit,” is how our spontaneous meetings would be announced early in the morning or at the end of the day, usually about twice a week. The biscuits were real, a specialty of the café at the bottom of the hill. Upon hearing the call, “It’s time,” The Biscuit Club would assemble and each of us would tell our war stories, detailing the triumphs and tragedies of the past few days.
Camaraderie is a powerful thing. Joy shared is joy doubled. Sorrow shared is sorrow halved. The knowledge that we would need fresh stories of adventure for the next meeting of The Biscuit Club kept us fresh in the faces of more new prospects than any mandate from management could ever have accomplished.
Do you sell alongside people with whom you’d be willing to eat a biscuit? Can you find a place that has good coffee, far from eavesdropping ears and suspicious minds?
You need adventure. And you need to be part of a biscuit club where your skills can be sharpened and your mistakes confessed without any fear of judgment or reprisal.
“It’s time for a biscuit.”
Bob Lepine went on to become the host of Family Life, a nationwide radio show about marriage and the family. I have a lot of happy memories that involve Bob and Malcolm and me 30 years ago. Here’s a short video of today’s Bob Lepine entertaining a group during a break in an interview. Isn’t Youtube wonderful?