Cold Call Training: Why "Booking the Meeting" Is Terrible Advice

"Cold calling is all about booking a meeting."

This advice has been all over LinkedIn this week.

It is usually written by Sales Directors of well-known global brands who probably don't know what a cold call looks like. Well a good one anyway.

Let's be honest. It is terrible advice.

Your cold call should be all about your prospect. It should be about their problems. It should be about their world.

It should not be about you.

The Self-Serving Trap

Focusing purely on the outcome or on getting a meeting is self-serving.

Prospects do not want to deal with a self-serving salesperson. They can smell the commission breath a mile away.

When you call with the sole intention of booking a slot on a calendar you treat the human on the other end like a number. You rush the conversation. You skip the listening part.

They want their problems fixed. They want a different perspective. They want to be challenged. They want to be helped.

They do not want someone calling them up begging for a virtual coffee saying "I'd love to show what we do."

We discuss why this approach kills your credibility in Stop Begging for Meetings. If you have to beg for their time you have already lost the sale.

Get Invited In

Stop focusing on booking meetings.

Start focusing on what is required to get a prospect to invite you in.

This is a mindset shift we drill into teams during our SDR Sales Training.

If you uncover enough pain and offer enough value the prospect will want to meet with you. They will ask you what the next steps are.

That is the difference between pushing a rope and pulling it.

Quality Over Dashboards

When you focus on just booking the meeting you end up with low-quality slots.

You get "ghosted." You get "no shows." You get people who have no budget and no intent to buy.

Start booking meetings that actually convert not ones that look great on a dashboard to your sales director.

As we covered in Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics, a full calendar is useless if it doesn't result in revenue.

If you want to stop wasting time on bad meetings stop trying to force them.

Focus on the problem. The meeting will follow.