If in some way you feel you should be making cold calls to grow your business but aren’t looking forward to making them:
DON’T DO IT
The chances are you will do it badly which may have an adverse effect upon your business.
For me cold calling is still as exciting as it was when I made my first cold call in the last century ! (1998) and if like me you enjoy the prospect of speaking to people on the phone you don’t know, then here are some tips on how we have used this technique so successfully over the years.
1. We don’t sell on the phone – The cold call is the start of a dialog over a period of time. On average it takes twenty months of conversations before we land that first project – It once took us over six years of calls before we got any work, though when we did get that piece of work, it was a series of training days with a five figure value.
2. We don’t play a numbers game. Each call has been carefully researched (more about this in a future blog) so we know who we need to speak to and have a strategy in mind. We also limit the number of calls we make in a day to a maximum of twenty five – we want to be fresh for each call. This is reflected in our success rate, one in twenty four (actual 4.23%) new people we call becomes a client.
3. We are prepared to take our time and not rush the call and persevere (with their permission) until we can speak with the right person. In one instance it took two years of calls before we could speak with the person we knew we needed to speak to – they were either out or too busy. Within two weeks of that first conversation we met up, two weeks later we delivered our first training session for them and eight years later they are still a client and we have exceeded a six figure turnover figure with them over this period.
You will notice these strategies are completely opposite to all those cold calls everyone receives from call centres. Often rushed (remember they have to make hundreds of calls in a day) and almost desperate to sign you up, what overall impression of their organisation are you left with?
For us cold calling isn’t just about sales, it is also an enjoyable way of doing some PR as well, leaving people with the impression that we conduct our business in a friendly honest and transparent manner.
