Cold Calling Works For Me
In the early days of my copywriting business, one of the most effective ways I used to promote my business was cold calling. I made lists of local businesses that were likely prospects for my business and set out to call them. Later I set my sights further afield and began a cold calling campaign in larger cities further away.
While I didn’t have huge success with cold calling - mainly because I only did it sporadically - I did land several large clients who paid my mortgage for many months.
Cold calling also gave me the opportunity to do more interesting work because I could work in more industries than I could by focusing solely on local business.
Another interesting side effect of cold calling - every time I engaged in a cold calling campaign I got work from elsewhere. Either someone I’d met at a networking meeting would call out of the blue with work, or I’d get a referral for work. It happened so regularly even my husband began to notice.
And this phenomenon is not unique to me. Several other writers who do cold calling mentioned the same effect. I think it’s the Law of Attraction at work. By putting so much energy and attention into gaining new clients, they appeared, just not in the manner I expected.
It’s my personal experience in cold calling that made me so excited when I met Shawn Greene, author of I’d Rather Have a Root Canal Than do Cold Calling! After several emails and phone conversations, Shawn kindly offered to do a free teleseminar for my readers. The teleseminar is Thursday July 3rd at 1 p.m. eastern. Even if you can’t attend the live call, please sign up because I will be making the recording available for everyone who registers.
Andrea J. Stenberg
Posted
on
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 3:32 pm under
Hi Andrea!
It’s been a while, but I stumbled across your post here, and was curious if you could comment on your experiences (if any) on phone-based cold calling vs. physical cold calling (i.e. visiting the businesses directly). Was it an effective way to sell a service like yours?
Best,
- Dan
July 7th, 2008 at 1:17 pmHello Dan,
Andrea asked me to answer your post. Can’t say what her experience was, of course, but can comment on visiting directly versus the phone in general.
The short answer is that they are almost identical! You can use the same approach, and expect the same sort of results. The differences are these:
In-person works well if your prospects are in buildings you can get to. Sounds silly, but think about it: If there’s just one prospect in this building, and two across town…going in person will take more effort than calling the same three prospects. That said, if you are visiting a client, why not knock on doors in the vicinity?
In person tends to be a bit more chatty than on the phone. Since gatekeepers and prospects can see you, you don’t have to work so hard to avoid setting off the stranger-alarm.
No matter which approach you use, be sure to keep it honest. Don’t pretend to be visiting clients in the area. People can tell when you stretch the truth like that and it works against you.
The other thing I always liked about in-person was getting out and about. Not so fun in blazing heat or driving rain; but even bad weather is a nice ice breaker in person.
Will it work for your business? Try it! Give it a real test-drive (or test-walk) for a couple/few months and see how it goes. Remember to wear comfortable shoes; and if it’s hot, be very glad you’re not required to wear nylons.
July 8th, 2008 at 11:15 amDan,
Thanks for your question. I’ve asked Shawn to answer (thanks Shawn for your detailed response).
In answer to your question about whether in-person cold calling works for my business, I can say that I’ve never tried it. First I live in a small town so I’m a little limited in who I could easily get to. Second, it never occurred to me to try.
Hope this helps.
Andrea
July 10th, 2008 at 6:30 am