Lie #1 in Sales & Marketing

Lie #1: 'Make more phone calls today than you did yesterday.'

If making phone calls really, actually works for you, then I suppose you should make more of them.
But most of the time, as I explain in 'Guerilla Marketing for Hi-Tech Sales People,' the phone calls aren't really working that well in the first place. And doing more of what already isn't working is just dumb. Plus, unsolicited phone calls just annoy people.
Today when you hear a motivational speaker getting sales people all revved up to go make phone calls and endure rejection, picture this in your mind: 1000 soldiers with sticks and rocks in hand charge valiantly onto a battlefield, where they are cut down with machine guns, tanks and artillery fire - dying in droves.
Actually a tiny handful of extraordinary, talented warriors will survive by strength, testosterone and wit. But the odds are heavily tilted against them. Only the very, very best even survive, much less prosper.
If your only weapon in sales is your telephone and your ability to withstand rejection, you're fighting tanks with sticks. And as the 21st century unfolds, the problem's going to get worse, not better.
Think about this: about 30 years ago, factory workers began to be displaced by machines and cheap foreign labor. The worker cost $12 per hour but the robot only cost $2.50 per hour. Anyone willing to work for $2.50 per hour? Lots of sales people are doing just that.
Today, sales people are being displaced by websites and media. Imagine for a moment that you were a door to door book salesman today (they were quite common 100 years ago) -- how would you ever compete with Amazon, or a bookstore like Borders or Barnes & Noble? Impossible. You'd starve to death. And you couldn't possibly provide your customers a similar level of service or selection.
A person selling books door to door is only slightly different from somebody who sells insurance or telecommunications or any number of other products and services today.
But here's the TRUTH: IF you carve out a niche for yourself and IF you use automated tools like your website and direct mail, you CAN increase the efficiency of your business and you CAN compete. And you won't antagonize your customers in the process and you won't need those big doses of motivation.
Listen up: You MUST carve out a niche, and you MUST use your communication tools shrewdly.
Most companies don't. Most websites are designed with no particular purpose in mind. Most companies don't have any idea how to create a direct mail piece that makes the phone ring. (That's why they think direct mail doesn't work.)

BOTTOM LINE:
1) You MUST have marketing tools that do the grunt work for you.
2) You must tweak those tools until they're effective.
Often you'll try something and it doesn't work the first time.
But... the good news is, once it works, it will usually work for YEARS.
That's why time spent on marketing is absolutely the best time investment you can make - IF you're educated about what really works and what doesn't.
Here's a link to an article about selling new technology to hard-to-reach customers

Original Source: Perry Marshall