Two days ago, I set out to compile a list of businesses to cold call. I spent an hour or so scouring through Google Maps to find 20 roofers in my area, one by one adding their names, phone numbers and website links to a Google Sheet. I was fired up and looking forward to crushing that list the next day.

The next day arrived. I sat down to make those calls after finalizing the script for the cold call. I practiced a couple times, even recorded myself so I could play it back and improve my tone before the real thing. Then came time to dial the first number of the day. It took me a while but I finally did it, a woman picked up and the call yielded nothing. She didn’t transfer me through to the owner, neither did I get an email. Her final words were, “You can take us off the list”. She just thought I was some telemarketer.

The call ended and I was dejected. This was only my fifth cold call ever and I wasn’t feeling good about my chances of getting a client anytime soon. I thought to myself, I worked on this script for a good amount time thinking it would get me through to a decision maker, but in reality I just got rejected by another gatekeeper and it didn’t feel good.

I had a long list of numbers to dial but I kept procrastinating. I had even entered the next number to call, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hit call. I felt like a loser. I had set out to call 20 businesses that day and I only ended up calling one.

And to add insult to injury, I opened up my Twilio account to see if my A2P 10DLC Campaign Registration had been approved, only to find that it had been rejected.

I thought to myself, “How am I this bad at cold calling?”. I wanted to find out what percentage of calls were converted to booked meetings by elite cold callers, so I googled it. Turns out even the best of the best convert 5-8% of their calls from what I found. And on average, cold callers convert 1-2% of their calls, which is pretty low. I mean that’s as low as you can go without basically being at zero. And this discovery, made me feel a little better about myself. I mean I am pretty bad at cold calling but at least I’m not that far from the average.

I had picked up the phone and dialed 5 times total. Which is basically nothing and I was expecting to get a client. I learned that I just need to stop overthinking and just start dialing. I was feeling bad for myself, but after finding out the average conversion rate, I’m honestly more motivated. I know that everyone who does this goes through the same thing. Now, I just need to put my head down and call these businesses because the inputs are what matters. As long as I’m dialing and trying to learn from every call I make, I will eventually (hopefully) get someone to listen to what I have to say and set a discovery call where I can demo my system for them.

I just need to get over it and do the work. So, stop obsessing over the perfect cold call script and just make those calls. I signed up for this. I knew starting a business was gonna be hard, and now its starting to feel like it, but I am not giving up. I will make those calls and I will find a client.