Cold Calling 101 - Beginners Guide
| March 20th, 2008Cold Calling is one of those terms that when many people here they shudder. Nothing like calling complete strangers; taking up their time and giving them a pitch while they are uninterested only to receive rejection. Sounds like fun where do I sign up?
The truth is cold calling does not need to be like that. In fact if you have a small business with an even smaller advertising budget cold calling is going to be a fact of life if you’re going to launch a successful venture. All it costs is a telephone call and most of the time if you’re calling established firms they have a toll-free number anyways.
Recently I’ve been doing some cold calling for a business of mine. It’s doing alright but with what I have to offer I want more people to become aware.
When you think of cold calling and the though to of pitching your idea to a potential customer does it make you grimace or leave a bad taste in your mouth? The reason is probably the way many perceive it or from the experiences you’ve heard about from others. It does not have to be that way.
Tips for Successful Cold Calling
1) Open with a greeting where you introduce yourself and sound enthusiastic as possible without crossing the line. If you’re really low on energy; save the call for another day! Make sure you remember there name!
2) Ask them about their company and specifically about the division in which you would like to become a supplier; get transfered to that person if need be.
3) After confirming whether they could be a customer or not begin by introducing your company; if possible mention something that gives you common ground. “I’m a fellow Canadian calling from X and I was wondering if…”
4) Don’t sound to scripted; people can tell when your scripted and this isn’t some lousy 9-5 where you cold call for someone else at 8$ an hour. This is YOUR business and if this call goes according to plan it’s YOU who will benefit along with the company and ultimately their clients. Care about it! Feel the person out if you can find some common ground discuss it for a minute and if you can get some laughter in there… DO IT!
5) When mentioning the features of your product or service… Don’t! They don’t care about features; features don’t sell. BENEFITS SELL. They are thinking and rightly so what’s in it for me? Tell them the benefits they’ll receive from you.
6) Offer some form of discount over traditional retail price. I’d say we can form some sort of collaboration and I can give you a discount off the sticker price.
7) Ask for some form of email and forward them a prepared letter that introduces your company highlighting benefits of working with your company. Bold the parts they must read.
8) Politely part ways by thanking them for there time and try and leave with something they will remember. Sometimes my last line is. “Thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me; as I mentioned earlier I’m very flexible should you be interested in potentially working together”. Something along those lines; it’s harder to write it out as when you’re in the heat of the moment you just talk. Just be yourself.
9) If you hear nothing from them in ~10 business days follow up again and ask them politely what they thought. You may only get one email so maybe even throw a discount in should they bite now.
10) Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get any leads immediately. Just make sure you call companies worth your time. I mean if you call 25 companies and get 1 good solid lead who produces benefits for you and the company then it was worth it. If you called 25 individuals and got 1 person to buy 1 package was it really worth it? (Arguably yes but by thinking bigger each conversion is the equivalent of many…
Basically 1 corporate client who does work for others is much better then 1 individual client; by a long shot!
That’s my quick guide to cold calling. Don’t be scared of cold calling just remember this is your business. Your the entrepreneur here; if you don’t have enough personal initiative to drum business up… Who will? Also if you don’t want to commute to work for the next 20-40 years picking a coffee up on the way you’ll need to put in some serious effort today. Take a look at where your energy and time is being spent and it’s not that hard to predict where you’ll be in 10 years from now… Where do you want to be!? Pick up the phone!
Interesting article. Tip #6 is always a good incentive.
[…] made a a post a few bloggeries back about cold calling. I’ve now called over 50 companies and struck deals with 2 of them. That’s 1 /25 ratio. […]