First month and not much luck cold calling. Need ideas.

So I am trying to sell gold and silver over the phone by cold calling. So far it has been a pretty brutal first month - 6 prospects and no deals yet. I've never cold-called before this.

Of course, I'm trying to get better at cold calling, at rebuttals, etc. I got Straight Line Persuasion by Jordan "wolf of wall street" Belfort. The guy who got me into this has been doing it for almost 20 years and made about $250,000 a year when he was cold calling and closing.

But, what if there was a way to get inbound leads? Or even referrals?

Our average deal size is $10,000 up to $1,000,000! One deal can mean a $25,000+ commission check (10%). Plus, we can turn IRA and 401(k)s into precious metals IRA/401(k)s, so someone can spend $400,000 out of their IRA and be $0 out of pocket.

Ideas I've had to get more sales:

1) offer financial planners / elder law attorneys a "finders fee" of %5 for referrals (going to try and call some financial planners this week to see if this is something they'll do)
2) post on craigslist offering to help people set up gold / silver / precious metals IRAs.
3) make a landing page and youtube channel to try and get people into a funnel and on the phone

I need to make some serious money this year because I no longer want to really even live my life. I got clean from opiates the beginning of the year, got high twice since then and was narcan'd back to life one of those times. If I can't start making money, if I'm still alone at the end of this year, I'm getting a motel room, and some fentanyl, and I'm not waking up, because I lost the girl I loved, and I've watched my dreams die, and I'm either going to make it as a salesman and crush it or I'm giving up but I refuse to be old and broke and alone. I used to be a programmer, and had 2 houses, and a commercial property, and I grew weed, and I was making like 150k a year, and like a breakup turned into a betrayal turned into heroin addiction and depression and it took me out. And this one girl, or couple of girls, like saved my life and made me want to live again, so I'm trying like hell, but I need to at least be successful enough I can have a place, take care of a girl, take care of her kids, move overseas.

100k minimum let's figure - in one year of cold calling, that's what I need to survive. How can I make (exceed) this much?

 

I haven't worked in years, never worked in sales and have a criminal record. So, if I was to look for a sales job with a higher base salary, I'd likely do it six months from now, Ideally after I sold *something*. Maybe I'd have better luck selling in person? Something like this: https://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/sls/d/pittsburgh-in-home-sales/7609660310.html

It takes a lot of skill to close a deal, and even to keep someone on the phone, but I've seen deals for over $300,000 close. When you're making 30k commission a clip you don't need a huge number of deals to make good money.

I just had the coolest plan for my life. I had bought this former elementary school that sat on 9 acres. I was going to grow weed inside it and turn it into a big homestead and live there with the girl I loved. Now I just want to learn to sell, make like 100k, find a girl and move overseas.

I made this site: https://preciousmetalsreferrals.com/

I'm putting 10 local financial planners in an excel sheet. I'm going to email them, then call them in the middle of the week and see what they think of getting their clients to buy metals from me.

I'd like to start a charity, one that pays back a percentage of donations as affiliate commission (https://www.authorityhacker.com/non-profit-affiliate-programs/) If I could raise a few hundred thousand, I could build a school / boarding house overseas and just live there and teach kids not just basic stuff like how to read but also do stuff like build websites and do YouTube. Just keep soliciting and building a bigger and bigger compound and housing more and more people.

Jordan Peterson says you need to find goals that you think are actually worth living for. I want to master sales and be a closer and make a ton of money, as long as it is something I am CAPABLE of doing. AND I know the things I want to do after I get money. But I'm lonely, and can only fail for so long - I should have been able to retire 5 years ago but today I'm still at square 1.

 

I question the value of cold calling in today's times. Are there other avenues you could explore other than this method? I wish you the best of luck and take it day by day. As @sarahk said, make safe choices. I would suggest you explore free online courses that could place you into a freelancing role, as it sounds you have plenty to offer in light of computers/web.

 

This is very similar to the folks who sell penny stocks and get large commissions on each sale. Think about this: If you are getting a 10% commission, you can estimate that your company is making 2-3x that in each sale. That means that the 40%+ marked up prices you are selling gold/silver at to a customer are an outrageous ripoff. That is why you are having trouble with cold calling and closing. All but the most naïve investors will immediately see through the scam. You are looking for victims, not buyers.

That said, cold calling, in general, lost a lot of its effectiveness with the introduction of caller ID decades ago. The move to using your mobile phones for business further amplified that problem because everybody screens their calls these days and virtually no one picks up an unknown number. Find another approach and get into an honest business.

 

Well how someone said you should take a job from a company it will get you trust
It somebody unknown call me i will not buy from him because i dont know him and i dont trust him

 

Switch the product perhaps? Not everybody want to do a long term investment in Gold. Try something different. Sure, the economy is depressed now, but 6 months without sales is an overkill.

 

I think selling gold and silver via direct mail will allow you to reach more people faster, with less rejection, while giving you more free time to do whatever you want.

 

The fact that you are willing to pound the phones to make sales puts you above the rest in likelihood to succeed in sales.

All I hear about cold outbound nowadays is the need for more sophisticated and multi-channel approaches, which means phone + email + social + other(?).

Are you leveraging tools that let you call several numbers at the same time and only connect you once someone answers? Like Connect and sell dot com? What is your tech stack for selling, who is providing it?

One month sure feels brutal, but is probably not enough time to learn to cold call, engage, start a conversation, and move someone to the next step.

I agree with what someone else mentioned above, if I bought gold and you made a 10% commission and the company you work for made another 10%, that'd mean overnight my investment lost 20% in value. That's crazy. the examples of $300K sales you're citing are likely extreme edge cases.

Maybe find something else to sell that would sell quicker?

There are some niches out there where you can make a big commission but still sell something that is valuable to the consumer. I don't know anything about Solar power to homes, but that comes to mind. If you're willing to pound the phones and the keyboard, you now just need the right offer. Instead of looking to make $30K per sale, maybe consider offers where you make $500 to $2K and you can consistently make some sales to get you going.

Good luck!