Teenage hormones made me cold call

Teenage horniness taught me everything there is to know about prospecting and cold calling..

I graduated high school in 1995 and am solidly Gen X.

I’d never heard the term “internet” until the summer after I graduated, my first concert was the very first show of the very first Lollapalooza tour, I flew from JFK to LAX by myself when I was 6, and nobody had a cell phone.

That last part is relevant to this story. The rest is contextual flavor.

In high school, when I’d see a hot girl in the hallway between classes, I’d ask around to get her name.

Once I had her name, I’d look her up in the white pages once I got home.

This was a smallish town of around 50,000 people, but there’d always be multiple entries for every last name. Common names for obvious reasons, unique names because you’d usually have multiple people from that family living in town.

I’d narrow my list down by last name and start dialing.

With a last name like Johnson you might have to dial 12 numbers before you found the right one.

A name like Osinski would be easier. Maybe 3 numbers.

The calls would go something like this…

Ring-Ring! “Is Heather home?”. “Sorry, you have the wrong number”

Ring-Ring! “I’m calling for Heather”. “Who?”. “Heather”. “Nope. Wrong number”.

On and on until I’d finally hit the right one…

Ring-Ring! “Is Heather there?”. “Who’s this?”

At this point, I’d have to get by the gatekeeper. Sometimes that was Grandma, Sister, Mom, Dad, Uncle, Cousin…

Sometimes they’d roll right over and get her, but a lot of times they were protective and truly gatekeeping.

“Who are you?”

“What do you want with her?”

“How’d you get this number?”

“How come I’ve never heard of you?”

Lesser dudes would have crumbled, but I had hormones on my side and always found a way around these gatekeepers. Big brothers were the worst. Dad’s the second worst. Grandmothers were the sweetest. Mom’s were always either icy or warm, no in between.

Then, once I’d have the prospect on the phone, the talk track was like this…

• I saw you in the hall today. You’re friends with xxx, right?

• I’m friends with them, too!

• Roast your mutual friend a bit. Get them to laugh.

• Talk about school, interests, etc

• Go for the close: “Well I wanted to call you because I thought you seemed really nice and I wanted to get to know you better. Can I give you a ride home tomorrow?”

My close rate was insane, too.

This all came up recently when I was talking with my son about how it was growing up in the old days. I blew his mind! (I heavily edited the way I presented this to him)

I think a lot of us in sales can trace our origins of sellers back to that first lemonade stand, or selling candy bars door-to-door for football, or just being a desperately horny teenager.