How to overcome the fear of cold calling?

I wouldn't fear it. I'm an engineer as well and you have to put yourself out there. People are actually looking for solutions. Look it at this way, if you had the solution to a problem, why wouldn't you share it with people suffering from it. Worst case, its an unopened email or call, no big deal.

I've been in this stage myself. Can share everything I learned from doing hundreds of calls for the previous employer and from 80 interviews I made for my own products. Let's connect on Twitter.

Cold calling is much harder than cold emailing or reaching out on social.

Try to connect and warm up each connection - comment/reply on social posts and make sure your profile has a reference to your solution, in case they decide to check you out based on your activity. Only then reach out with your "ask".

In general, to build up confidence to sell you need to practice "asking". Ask for a better table in a restaurant, ask for feedback, ask for a discount on anything you use, ask for favors. The habit of asking will help you overcome the fear of rejection.

Good luck.

p.s. Don't go for volume early on - as you are validating a product you need more qualitative feedback, not quantitative. You need how/why your solution isn't a good fit, not just flat out rejection or no-response.

TLDR: Cold calling, cold emailing, cold knocking, it's all a numbers game. Gamify it.

Start with your lowest revenue prospects first - the ones who will bring you the least amount if you sell them (if you know this of course). And work up to your big whales (ie large prospects). THis way you get all your fear/practice out of the way with 'lower producing clients' and have more confidence / experience with the larger ones. This obviously assumes you are calling one-by-one.

I spent a previous life in insurance and investment sales, and there were days where we'd be in a small room from 8a to 8p cold dialing landline phones to get appointments to sell product. I quickly learned that if I made 100 calls each day, I'd talk to 30 people, schedule 10 appointments, of which 3 would show up, and 1 would result in a sale.

So I made each dialing session into a little game. 100 little boxes, tick off each one as I make calls, and give myself a point for everyone I talked to, more points for appointments. Could I beat my previous day's / week's / month's score. Eventually it just became habit and I didn't need to do this anymore, but it got me through the first few months when I was nervous about sounding like an idiot on the phone.

As far as talking to prospects over the phone, you are going to stutter and stammer and feel like an idiot at first. Unless you've been selling this product/service for a while, you just will. Accept it.

If you only have a limited number of prospects to contact, DON'T START OFF WITH THEM - you don't want to waste your limited pool of prospects when you sound like an idiot. Get a trusted friend to role play with: you call them and go through your sales pitch a few times . THEN, only after you've done a few easy run throughs, have them cut you off and give objections ("I don't have time to talk to you!", "Stop spamming me!", "What's in it for me?", "That's too expensive."), and come up with responses that make sense for these objections.

I'd even recommend writing down a short simple script for your primary sales pitch and any big objections you might run into. It sounds dumb and people will tell you not to read from a script, but if you are doing cold calls, you want every call in the beginning to go the same. The reason for this is that you will quickly see where your pitch breaks down and where people object. Or where people get interested and want to hear more. If you are saying something different every time, you'll never know what works and what doesn't. You'll also take much longer to get comfortable with what you are saying.

That being said, know you will ditch the script rather quickly because you will internalize it and be able to go off it as the conversation builds. Same with the objection scripts: they are great in the beginning so you can find text that works to handle the objections and once you internalize those responses that work to get through the objection, you will REALLY be able to sell your service.

Also, be persistent. If someone tells you no but doesn't hang up, handle their objection and continue on with the script/pitch: "Oh that's not really what I'm interested in." "No? Well how exactly are you solving problem X right now?...Oh that's interesting. My service is very similar and compliments what you are currently doing by X, Y, Z.". Make them hang up or give object 3 times before you hang up.

If someone tells you to call them back at a later time, don't bother

1. until you get through your full list and decide to recontact the ones you didn't get through to / told you to call back, or
2. They genuinely showed a LOT of interest in your offering.

These people are just being polite and want you off the phone.

DBAD: Don't be a D!ck. 90% of people won't answer or will tell you to "F off!", these are not your clients and probably won't be. You don't care. They are simply 1 of 100 opponents you need to get past to find your sale. You are happy to put them past you and move on to the next call - one step closer to your sale. If they allow it, thank them for their time, tell them to look you up if they're situation changes, hang up and make the next call.

If I misunderstood your question and you meant cold EMAILING (or other form of communication) the points above still are the same. Whenever I cold email, I start with X amount of prospects, and know that 1% will convert. I follow-up 3 times with 3 days between each follow-up. I use the same email script 3-4 lines: "Hi, I offer X. X can help you with Y. I'd love to work with you. If this interests you, email me. Thanks.") . Don't be too wordy (same goes for the phone script). Anytime someone emails you back rejecting you, pleasantly thank them and if the rejection wasn't mean, ask them to keep you in mind for the future. Remove rejections from your list so you don't email them again.

At the end of the day though, no matter what the medium, consistency (how often you dial/send; in your message) and a belief in "this is a numbers game" will pay off the most for you.

Be pleasant, explain what you offer, ask a few qualifying questions, set a sale or appointment, thank them, hang up, move on to the next prospect.

Ignore the failure. Embrace the numbers. Be consistent. You got this!

You're not alone here.

I'd suggest separating your self-worth from what you're doing. In the beginning, when you cold outreach and get no response or rejection, there could be many reasons: no time, too many things going on, etc. It may not even mean your pitch is not good. It may not mean your product isn't good or you're not a great creator.

In my work coaching tech founders, I recommend them to use an experimentation mindset even with marketing initiatives to reframe fear into measurable learning.

For example:

1. What's my learning goal with cold outreach?
2. Who are my people?
3. How should I construct the experiment? (# of messages, # of people, the content of the message, frequency of sending, etc.)
4. How long should the experiment go for?
5. How will I measure if I hit my goal or not?
6. If I don't hit it, what will I do?
7. Lastly, when will I start?

This way, when you get an unfavorable outcome, it's easier to think of it as just another data point. Any data point is one step closer to where you want to go.

BTW, every single successful founder has experienced overwhelming fear at some point. And they still have fear, even with great revenue and traction. I believe the # 1 indicator of success is how well you can tolerate uncomfortable emotions like fear.

Fear likely won't go away. But you have the agency to use commitment and discipline to follow through regardless. You can treat yourself with compassion and patience. Once you get into the habit of doing those, the fear will get better.

You just have to do it. I've been rejected and ignored thousands of times. You don't really remember it. You do remember the wins and closed deals because you reached out.

Recently I contacted 22 people via cold email. 18 ignored me. 4 replied. Of that, 3 went nowhere. One guy became a client.

Every single time I win a deal or get a new client from cold outreach, you forget about the people ignoring or rejecting you.

I know that feeling too well! Maybe giving it a test trial with some of your friends or colleagues might help