I bought a recommended sales book a few years ago, and I feel like as a relatively shy engineer, the stuff in there was not appropriate for me. I've seen similar networking advice from people to whom it comes naturally, and seen when naturally awkward people try following that advice, instead of being themselves, and come off worse. Unfortunately the cliche of being yourself is largely true, which means it's tough to really find any playbook that will work.
I agree on the low value though. Cold calling is a numbers game - if you're selling sham-wows, call enough people and one will bite. Selling consulting is relationship based and may be much harder to cold call your way into a mandate.
Maybe you're already there, but I'd try and get (ideally) warm introductions, exploratory coffee chats, and then follow up with concrete proposals of what you'd do that would address some issue they are having. Whether you can or can't get a warm intro, messaging and asking for a meeting, framed as market research to understand what the challenges or priorities are in their industry could be a way to start a relationship
Cold calling is a variation on the hard-sell. Hard-selling is aggressive and few people are very comfortable with doing it (mostly because it violates a few social norms).
It's not the only, or even necessarily the best, sales method. My advice to you is to adopt a sales method that you are comfortable with -- the more comfortable you are, the better the results you'll see will be. If you really feel the need for a sort of sales that you just aren't built to do, then you need to hire or partner with someone who excels at it.
Comments
I bought a recommended sales book a few years ago, and I feel like as a relatively shy engineer, the stuff in there was not appropriate for me. I've seen similar networking advice from people to whom it comes naturally, and seen when naturally awkward people try following that advice, instead of being themselves, and come off worse. Unfortunately the cliche of being yourself is largely true, which means it's tough to really find any playbook that will work.
I agree on the low value though. Cold calling is a numbers game - if you're selling sham-wows, call enough people and one will bite. Selling consulting is relationship based and may be much harder to cold call your way into a mandate.
Maybe you're already there, but I'd try and get (ideally) warm introductions, exploratory coffee chats, and then follow up with concrete proposals of what you'd do that would address some issue they are having. Whether you can or can't get a warm intro, messaging and asking for a meeting, framed as market research to understand what the challenges or priorities are in their industry could be a way to start a relationship
Cold calling is a variation on the hard-sell. Hard-selling is aggressive and few people are very comfortable with doing it (mostly because it violates a few social norms).
It's not the only, or even necessarily the best, sales method. My advice to you is to adopt a sales method that you are comfortable with -- the more comfortable you are, the better the results you'll see will be. If you really feel the need for a sort of sales that you just aren't built to do, then you need to hire or partner with someone who excels at it.