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The Do Not Call List: Fact or Fiction

The Do Not Call List: Fact or Fiction

Everything you need to know about "The List"

May 25, 2023

Happy National Brown-Bag It Day! The GOAT of middle school lunches and 40oz’s.

In today’s Follow Up:

The “Do Not Call Registry” explained ☎️
Sales in the news 🗞️
Sales weapons of the week 🔫
Cool jobs at cool companies 💰

Sales Fact of The Day

40% of salespeople say prospecting is the hardest part of their job.

36% of people say closing is.

HubSpot.com

Everything you need to know about the “Do Not Call List”

Most people think of the “Do Not Call List” like Santa’s naughty list.

Is it even real? Is it an empty threat by angry prospects? Is it a way to find new prospects?

We didn’t know either.

So we sent the intern on another quest and answered the question we’re all asking: It’s real.

After this email, you’ll be an expert on the Do Not Call List. What it is, who’s on it, what it does, and how you can use it to make a quick buck (not in the way you think).

The story of the Do Not Call List started in 1991 when Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The TCPA was created in response to the increasing number of unsolicited telemarketing phone calls and robo-calls.

Which makes sense considering only 1% of the population likes to receive unsolicited calls and 69% of people find telemarketing offensive. (Who is this 1% and where can I find them?)

After Congress passed the TCPA, The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) partnered with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to develop the Do Not Call List, which banned businesses from calling any number on the list.

Well, not all businesses. Do Not Call List participants can still legally receive calls from:

Charities, political groups, debt collectors, and surveys
A business that has opened within the last year.
A business about an existing debt, contract, or payment.
Prerecorded messages or emergency calls required for health and safety.

Most businesses are barred from calling anyone on the Do Not Call List unless the registered citizen provided written consent or signed up for the list within 31 days of the call.

Here are some other stats about the Do Not Call List:

200M people have registered for the Do Not Call List.
The registry doesn’t expire.
The FTC has sued hundreds of companies responsible for unwanted calls and has obtained more than $290 million in judgments against violators.

Earlier this year, a woman in Phoenix received $15,000 from illegal robocalls. And has another $40k pending in the courts. Clint Steiner made $1k in 20 minutes. But that’s nothing compared to Dan Graham, a Texas man who received $100k from robocallers.

There’s even a whole playbook for how to pay the reverse uno card on robo callers.

Doc Compton, a self-anointed “man of the people”, created a course called robocalls.cash teaching you how to take robocalls, research the callers, and make them pay with templated lawyer letters.

But overall, the Do Not Call List packs more bark than bite

U.S. phones received more than 50 billion (yes, billion) robocalls in 2021. More than 40% of those robocalls were estimated to come from phone scams, but 17% of them were estimated to come from telemarketers.

The real question is how do you react when someone asks to get taken off your company’s do not call list?

“Heard you say no, but your eyes are telling me yes.”

Beg and plead with them to hear your pitch?

Send them a box of chocolates?

No.

Confirm you took them off the list or do so immediately.

If they don't want you to call them, they aren’t a good prospect. Move on.

Theirs plenty of fish in the sea. 🐟

The good news: most sales lead databases like ZoomInfo automatically suppress leads on the Do Not Call Registry. This means you don’t need to worry about double-checking the list yourself (as long as your lead source provider offers this feature).

Sales Tip of The Day

Always lock in the next steps at the end of a call.

Establishing a specific date that you will speak with your prospect next will help you avoid chasing them down.

Sales in the News

Ex-pharma salesman gets house arrest in health care fraud, selling unnecessary medications through a South Jersey doctor. The fraud costed state healthcare plans nearly $50 million.
5 things the world’s strongest B2B sales teams are doing to build strategic relationships and do more with less.
From Reddit: Why do so many "Sales enablement" people have NO sales experience?

Sales Weapons of The Day

Scanlist.ai - Scrape up to 20 data points from Linkedin profiles and use them to create personalized sales messages with the built-in AI writer.
Humanlinker.com - Create icebreakers with this Chrome extension. Personalized messages from LinkedIn recent activity, bio, experience, or education.