I talked with a hiring manager yesterday who cold-called 25 prospects in her market last week and got a very high rate of negative responses. Take me off your list. Stop calling me. I’m not interested, don’t call me again. And other similar responses. Cold calling is difficult under any circumstances, but this level of negativity seems to be higher than normal. What’s going on? One explanation is there are several cold-calling services and aggressive brokers who use technology and systems to call every experienced agent in your marketplace—often multiple times. This carpet-bombing approach attempts to find the few agents who are in such distress (at any snapshot in time), they will respond to a generic recruiting request from a telemarketer. The 99%+ of agents who are not in this much distress, find these calls annoying. After getting three or four of these per week, it’s understandable why they show some aggression towards the next person who calls. How do you avoid this dynamic? Remember what we know to be true about human nature: Professionals want to connect with other professionals whom they trust and respect. Without this baseline, most prospects will treat you with suspicion at best, and belligerence if they feel provoked. If you have built a strong professional reputation, connect via referral, and are known as someone who helps others, you’ll usually be welcomed into conversations. If you’re not willing to lay this groundwork before making connections, it’s going to be rough ride.