Pick Up The Phone and Sell: How Proactive Calls to Customers and Prospects Can Double Your Sales

by Alex Goldfayn

In a digital world when everyone gets more email and text than they can process, the single most effective way to sell to customers remotely is over the phone. Unfortunately, many sales professionals lack the confidence and technique to do this effectively. Just Pick Up The Phone is a definitive resource for multiple generations of salespeople, teaching them how to quickly and easily leverage phone calls to drive sales. Goldfayn expects that salespeople will get 20-30% of their pre-pandemic meetings back. But the remaining 70-80% of their customers will need to be sold to remotely. Their most powerful and overlooked tool is their phone.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

309 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 16, 2021

Reviews

[Sarah Tenisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read the book, shed your fears, sell more and grow. Alex provides not just direction, but also the tools to develop positive sales habits that will absolutely grow the business. Listen to my interview with him on the Tech Me Seriously podcast, too, so you can hear him while you read the book. Makes it even more entertaining!

[Stephanie Wanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I’ve read alot of sales books and this one is definitely one of the better ones. I needed to be reinvigorated and motivated to continue hitting the phones in Q4 and this did the trick. Great newsletter sent out weekly as well. Templates and scripts were meh but messaging and actionable behaviors / change of mindset are there.

[David Tsymbal · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not a bad book just super repetitive. It was the same thing over and over and over again. I gave up on page 220. Flipped through the rest and it was just more of the same. Read the first few chapters and don’t waste your time on the rest.

[Vitaly Kirkpatrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a salesperson, I was skeptical about picking up the phone as a sales method. However, after reading Alex Goldfayn's book "Pick Up The Phone and Sell," I was pleasantly surprised by the practical and actionable tips he provided. The book is a step-by-step guide on effectively reaching out to customers and prospects through the phone, leading to an increase in sales. The advice on building relationships and managing objections was particularly useful, and I have already seen a positive impact on my sales numbers since implementing the techniques. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to boost their sales and take their strategy to the next level.

[Maciej Walinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy to read book you should be able to get through in 2-3 days at most. I read a couple chapters a day with my morning coffee so it took a bit longer, but that's more a function of not really needing to have read it at all.

Still, I certainly agree with the overall message that, as the title suggests, calling clients and getting them live on the phone is critical to sales success. I didn't agree with all of the tactics mentioned as they tend to draw from the old-school sales playbook where charm takes precedent, but Goldfayn frames this as positive intent, and I can appreciate that.

The premise is sound enough, but the tactics and methodology won't be of much help in complex and enterprise sales. This book is better suited for more transactional type sales, sales with lower-stakes, and particularly for salespeople with an existing book of business. It does touch on pure cold-calls, which the author terms 'relationship/helping calls' but dedicates only a few pages toward the end of the book to it. Unfortunately for anyone that has to prospect net new clients for a living, the advice here will be of little value.

But on the whole, Goldfayn has some good ideas, and a seemingly bottomless penchant for positivity that he hopes will permeate into the reader. It can definitely come off as overly idealistic, but is certainly better than the usually pessimistic outlook salespeople have on making sales call.

For the time and nominal cash investment, I would recommend this to anyone who works in a B2C or inside sales B2B capapacity at a firm focused on more of a transactional sale. 3.5/5

[Katy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

"If you find yourself avoiding something that you know you should be doing, it is almost always because of fear."

When I read a business book, it isn't because I'm looking for something page-turning or interesting. It's because I'm looking for actionable advice I can implement immediately to get better at my job. As someone who avoids the phone like the plague because of a pure fear I can't define and therefore don't totally understand, this book perfectly fits the "actionable advice" criteria. If you are supposed to be using the phone for your job but don't, read this book to learn how.

While practical, the writing style is repetitive and a little annoying so I'm not going to rate it any higher than a three. It is written as if a speech or coaching session became a book. Writing for broadcast and writing for print are not, and should not be, the same, and the book suffers accordingly.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pros:
- Provide useful tips for calling sales such as what kind of customers you should call and what to say.
- Encourage every sales to pick up the phone and call, what kind of fears you are facing and how to overcome it.
- Emphasise the importance of sale calling.

Cons:
- Didn't mention where to find the contact, especially when you need to call a brand new customers.
- All the techniques and tips work only when you have the contacts, connections first.
- Didn't work if you don't have phone number of the prospects.
- Didn't work in today's world when everyone is afraid of scamming, computer fake calls.

[Brian Kruszewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a no-fluff, practical guide that reminds salespeople of a simple truth: real conversations drive real results. Goldfayn makes a compelling case for proactive phone calls as the most powerful—and often overlooked—tool in sales. With easy-to-follow tactics, call scripts, and mindset tips, this book is perfect for anyone looking to increase sales by doing what most avoid: picking up the phone. Direct, motivating, and immediately actionable.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soooo it took me a year to finish this book because of how repetitive it is. But the message is truly very good, and important to the success of someone in any level of sales! I highly recommend this book to anyone who works with customers! The way the book is written short sprints of knowledge makes it an easy read!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the authors’s writing style to be very annoying. Most of the paragraphs were one sentence long, making the reading experience feel like you were reading bulleted lists. There is a lot of good information here, however, the type of sales detailed in the book does not apply to every industry, especially mine.

[Donna Cutting · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book on Audible. I like that he did motivate me to pick up the phone. It’s making a difference. I think his call scripts are a bit outdated.

[William Whitney · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could have been a pamphlet