I saw a ridiculous LinkedIn post that said the ONLY way to get better at cold calling is to do a lot of cold calling.
Make 1,000 calls and you'll get better than you ever could by taking a course.
Umm, no.
Not if you have no clue about what you're doing.
If you're doing the wrong things 1,000 times, you're not developing skill. You're reinforcing bad habits. You're getting really good at being bad.
And depending on how your brain works, you might also be building up resistance to calling itself, because you're repeatedly doing something poorly, getting crappy results, feeling rejection, and associating all of those negative feelings with picking up the phone.
Think about how ridiculous the "just do it 1,000 times" advice sounds when we apply it to almost anything else.
I don't know how to play the piano. I’d like to be able to. I greatly admire people who do. But I never took lessons. If I sat down and tried tapping away at it 1,000 different times I wouldn't sound like Billy Joel. I'd sound more annoying than the guy talking loudly on his iPhone in the coffee shop.
Education Alone, Is Not the Answer, Either
But here’s the other side to this. You can't learn a skill simply by consuming information about it, either. David Sandler famously wrote a book titled You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar. (That could be applied to reading a book too, but I'll overlook the irony.)
When I first got into competition barbecue in the 90's, way before all the barbecue shows and YouTube videos, I read what little was available at the time about smoking brisket. Then I tried it, and turned many beautiful pieces of beef into inedible, shoe leather-like substances. Reading more articles wouldn't magically make me a great pitmaster. But neither would smoking another 100 briskets exactly the same way. (Someone reading this right now is saying I should use the definition of insanity quote. There.)
What ultimately made the difference was more learning, watching people who knew what they were doing, asking questions at contests, taking courses, buying VHS videos (kids, you can Google that), getting coaching, practicing, evaluating what happened, making adjustments, and doing it again. And again.
Many briskets were harmed in the process.
Today, I produce Texas-pitmaster-level, melt-in-your-mouth brisket. At least that's what friends, family, and guests tell me.
So, what does brisket have to do with prospecting, sales, learning, and mastery?
A lot.
Brisket porn taken from a video at my @ArtOfBarbecue Instagram page
Repetition Alone Does Not Create Skill and Mastery
Repetition creates habits, and whether those habits are good or bad depends on what you're repeating.
"Just make more calls."
"Get your reps in."
"It's a numbers game."
Sure, you need reps. But reps of WHAT?
If a salesperson uses a gimmicky, self-centered opening 1,000 times, they'll probably get very good at delivering a gimmicky, self-centered opening. If they immediately launch into a pitch every time someone answers, they'll reinforce that behavior. If they panic at the first hint of resistance and start defending themselves, 1,000 repetitions can make that reaction almost automatic.
Vince Lombardi said, "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect." Another variation I like even better is, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent."
So be damn careful what you're making permanent.
There's another problem with bad repetition, and this one might be even more damaging.
Imagine someone who's already uncomfortable with prospecting. They've been told the cure is simple: make more calls. So they do. Their opening creates resistance. They hear "not interested." They get brushed off. Their mind goes blank and they awkwardly stutter and stammer. They feel lousy. Then they do it again.
And again. And again.
So, what exactly are they training? They're certainly practicing their words. But they're also training their brain to believe something like this:
Call = discomfort.
Prospecting = rejection.
Picking up the phone = hurts like hell.
And then we're surprised when they start finding other things to do instead of calling. CRM cleanup becomes urgent and fascinating.
That's why telling someone who's struggling to "just make more calls" can be like telling a terrible golfer to fix his slice by buying another bucket of balls. More swings aren't necessarily the answer. (Ask me how I know that.)
Better swings are.
One caveat, for anyone frozen solid by this. If you're so paralyzed by the fear of rejection that you can't get your hand to pick up the phone at all, the very first hurdle isn't quality. It's just dialing, without telling yourself a false story.
That's not the same thing as "make 1,000 calls." That advice is about reps of a script. This is about breaking the freeze before you're even trying to be good.
I wrote a whole newsletter issue on why that rejection feeling is almost entirely self-inflicted, and how to make it stop. If you haven't read it, see it here. It's worth five minutes before you go any further here.
But learning without doing doesn't work either
And this is where the other extreme fails.
You can read every sales book ever written. Watch hundreds of training videos. Attend webinars. Listen to podcasts. Collect every shiny new AI prompt promising answers to all objections. And become the world's foremost authority on what you should say.
Then have your brain give you a "404 Not Found" error as you completely freeze when an actual human being answers the phone.
Knowing isn't doing.
That's why real skill development requires a loop: learn what to do and why it works, observe what good looks and sounds like, practice somewhere it's OK to screw up, get feedback on what worked and what didn't, adjust, take it into real conversations, then review what actually happened. And repeat.
That's how I stopped making brisket that could have been used as roofing material. And it's how salespeople actually become better sales professionals.
And here's where AI can help us solve a problem we've always had with sales training.
Most of the conversation about AI in sales has focused on having AI do more things for salespeople: write the email, research the prospect, summarize the call, create the follow-up, automate the outreach. All potentially useful, in the right context, sure.
But I'm much more interested in another question:
How can AI help salespeople actually become better at selling?
Think about the traditional problem with sales practice. You need someone to practice with, preferably someone who understands selling well enough to react realistically. (Which, by the way, is NOT, "OK, Kyle, you be a prospect and Sara, you be you, the salesperson. Go.") Then you need someone qualified to listen, identify what you're doing wrong, explain why, suggest an improvement, and let you try it again.
That's expensive and time-consuming. And no shocker here, most salespeople don't do much of it. Am I right?
So instead, they practice on humans. Actual prospects. Paying prospects, potentially.
Which is a pretty expensive place to learn.
What if medical students did the same thing before they became surgeons?
Now imagine being able to practice an opening before making the call. The prospect responds. You react. You get immediate coaching.
"Here's where you created resistance."
"You tried to answer the objection with your rebuttal, but you never questioned the premise behind it."
"You started talking about your company before giving them any reason to care."
Then: try it again. And again. Not mindlessly 1,000 times. Intentionally.
That's a very different kind of repetition.
You can use this right now, even without an AI coach
Take one part of your sales conversation where you know you could be better. Not your entire sales process. One thing.
Your opening. Your response to "We're already happy with our supplier." Your transition into questions. A question you routinely ask. How you respond when someone says, "Just send me something."
Then use this process:
Learn the principle. Don't just memorize words. Understand what you're trying to accomplish and why.
Listen to yourself. Record yourself saying it. You'll hear things you never notice while you're actually speaking.
Practice different responses. Don't rehearse only the perfect conversation. Practice what happens when the other person pushes back, misunderstands you, challenges you, or gives you an answer you weren't expecting.
Get feedback. From a manager, coach, colleague, or technology that actually understands the skill you're trying to develop.
Change ONE thing. Don't try to repair seven problems simultaneously.
Try it again.
Then take it into the real world and pay attention to what happens. That's deliberate practice, and it's very different from simply going through the motions. There's no prize for making 1,000 lousy calls. The goal isn't to become someone who makes more calls. How about becoming someone who's better when they make them?
And this guy says that's one of the most exciting uses of AI in sales.
Not replacing the salesperson. Developing the salesperson.
And that isn't just a good quote for me. It's what I'm working on right now: using AI not simply to do more sales tasks, but to coach salespeople to become better at the human part of selling. I'm not ready to unveil it yet, but I expect to have a lot more to share with you over the next couple of months.
And you don't need to wait to start getting this type of Smart Calling training and coaching. You can get it right now with my The Smart Calling Prospecting and Sales App For B2B Professionals at Studio.com/art. It gives you the training, examples, practice, and guidance to help you get better at the conversations that matter.
Because the goal isn't 1,000 more reps.
It's making the next rep better than the last one.
Go make it your best week ever!
