A Thought About Cold Calling To Sell Our Services...

Like placing an ad in the yellow pages or passing out flyers, right?

You raise a good point, but in many cases the very people we are approaching and trying to help don't have websites / or don't realize the huge benefit a proper web presence will have to their bottom line - so understandably these people arent heavy internet users ie. they are not the sort of people that are actively searching "web design agency "you town" online, so you would not be able to capture them online through inbound methods.

This is why cold calling is the most effective method to engage with them and educate them.

It's a great question, and I have a great answer.

I market the same way I show my clients how to market. And this is how I explain it to them if needed...

"Local online marketing gets the low hanging fruit...the easy sales...the customers that are looking to buy now, or are looking to learn more before they buy. This is like manna from heaven. This is the cream. This is the customer you have to have.

Referral selling gives us quality prospects who know someone ecstatic with our service.

Cold calling on the phone brings in new clients that would have never seen my direct mail, and would have not gone online to find me. We cold call to find that perfect client that we are eager to please. And we work hard to earn referrals from cold called clients that we would never find otherwise."

You should always have a rehearsed, answer to every possible question or objection that actually furthers the sale.

They don't realize they need our services. Or they are set on the fact that they just don't need us. That's why its up to us to educate and inform them so they will understand exactly how they can benefit from what we offer. Cold calling them is just another way to reach those who realize they don't want to be reached, yet.

I disagree. My main service is SEO, but all clients I've gained were either cold call, referral, cold call email. I do have a freelancer website (my sig) but I haven't gotten one lead throught it because
1. PPC didnt work - To be fair, I haven't invested enough
2. SEO - I haven't had the time to SEO my own site to generate leads

Yes I could be my own best customer but time is money and I don't need to prove to myself I can generate my own leads through my own service for the sake of it. That's just a waste of resource when I can chase new leads

The bottom line matters more than how I gain my lead.

BTW - I have people that send me lead regularly, now why would I waste my time on SEO'ing my site? I have enough proof on my client's site to do that job and that's all that matters.

Good luck sir.

You're almost right.

SEO for certain keywords, brings in certain traffic... how well your site converts will show how many leads you get with that method.

PPC, easy to scale up and bring in more traffic but people need to realize that they almost always take an initial loss in PPC in order to build a good campaign. A lot of people starting out, don't have time for PPC to learn the ins and outs and they don't have money to spend on it.

Direct mail... if you have a good converting piece, then yeah, scale it up.

The thing is, these methods cost a lot of money... they bring in a certain amount of leads, and certainly most can make a living with it. Heck, you can make 5K/mo with just linkedin, or email marketing, or craigslist, or any other method.

What cold calling does, is it DOES get a foot in the door, it allows you to possibly get a sale from someone who is not actively looking for your services.

When you're using JUST ONE form of marketing, you're really limiting yourself. That isn't marketing... that is just using one technique. Marketing should be an overall strategy with multiple techniques to drive leads and ultimately customers.

You have to realize that sales, is not marketing and marketing is not sales.

If you're generating:
10k/mo with linkedin
5k/mo with Craigslist

and that is all you're doing... you're missing out on another 10k/mo from cold calling, another 5k/mo with direct mailing, and so on.

You're limited with every form of marketing there is... Some people want to be called, others want to be emailed, others want to connect on linkedin, others google what they want, others search craigslist. Go where your customer is. If your potential customer isn't looking for your services, why don't you call them, see if they understand the value of what you have to offer?

You can't just use one form of marketing, and you can't write off any other form... everything works, you just have to work it.

Internet marketing costs money. Even SEO needs money now. Cold calling is cost effective in many ways.

Direct mail is also a great way to drum up clients. Pretty much I am a fan of direct marketing. I want to reach my clients personally.

While I do agree that sometimes your target market is offline, I personally do not like cold calling to generate your sales. Their are more socially acceptable means to generate sales such as using Linkedin to meet and greet people. Even the good old fashion meeting people / business owners through your own associates. Yes this takes more time and effort to actually play "dress up" but you gain a more valuable client that way who can testify of your greatness when their friend requires services you offer. They can give a personal testimony of your character (since they would personally know you now) and a testimony of your company (since they are also a client)

Oh boy, another "I hate cold calling thread".

Whatever...


(and most people here DON'T call...they look for every excuse NOT to do it...)

If you don't like calling, don't do it. Nobody's forcing you to.

But you know, in spite of your desire to hide behind your computer, eventually you're going to have to talk to somebody to make a sale.

And what are you going to do then?

The thing is with inbound leads is that they they are often in negotiation with 5+ other companies selling the same services as you.

This is called a reactive strategy, whilst picking up the phone and making a call is being proactive, it gives you control over the sales cycle and makes your results far more predictable than sitting on your ass waiting for your phone to ring.

It's better to go after the people who aren't aware of what your benefits are and selling to them. You go into the call and create the need first instead of the usual problem identification process we are taught to use. We get their attention, then curiosity then we can start selling.

The problem is you think you should be doing ONE marketing push at a time.

People who think this way never really grow the business like they want. The fact is, there is no magic bullet.

If someone asks why you are not using your own techniques to market, your answer should instantly be "we are!"

Any business that relies only on one kind of marketing is asking for trouble and limiting their growth. Your service is hopefully just ONE PIECE of your clients marketing efforts.

My main product consists of four different types of marketing. They are all separate and unrelated. I help my clients reach out to their target in many ways. I use them all myself also. So if a prospect were to ask - the proof positive is that I am talking with them. I use my own system. It works.

One of the four methods is why I am now sitting in front of you.

I'm going to give you a second answer. The first one is what I tell clients, this is what I really think.

Cold calling is faster and cheaper than any other kind of marketing....assuming that you are good at it. And that's a huge assumption. Cold calling (to sell your own services) is selling. Some people are great at it, others not.
Cold calling gets you business you would never get otherwise.
And there is no waiting period. You can start getting results right away.

Also, it's not an "either or" thing. You can cold call, while waiting for phone calls from your marketing efforts. If you are using advertising, it can be a long time between calls.

Personally, I don't do it (except when showing off) anymore. But it takes some time to get all the other ways of marketing to pay off so well that cold calling would unprofitable.

There are two ways to hunt. Beat the bushes or set traps.
After you set all your traps..beat the bushes. there is always more business you can get.

(For the "analogy challenged", Beating bushes means cold calling, Setting traps means inbound marketing.)

Lots of good stuff here being shared, I think.

Added after I read the last post.
Jason Kanigan has a cold calling approach that is highly effective, and is different from what most think of as "cold calling". I've used it myself with improved success.

I have people in my office cold calling... commission only, and that is all they do. They also answer incoming calls from other marketing efforts like email marketing, CL, direct mail, etc. I go after all the inbound leads through the website and lead capture forms, sometimes I hand over leads that I just don't feel like following up with week after week.

The cold calling, one of my sales people who probably is below average, now has 350 warm leads in the pipeline. About half the daily calls are to leads that have been warmed up, and we're furthering them in the sales process. The other half are completely cold. Each sales person is assigned one industry in one state. On average, there are 5-6,000 leads, or I should say prospects that a sales person targets before they move to either a new industry or a new state. By the end of this year, my below average sales person will likely have over 1,000 qualified, warm or hot leads in the pipeline.

He isn't great at sales but he makes the calls. He isn't the smartest person, but he makes sales. He sometimes says things on the phone that makes me cringe... but he is still making sales. That is why cold calling is so easy to implement. Anybody can do it, because if there is a need or a want for what you're selling, you will generate sales. Your conversion rate may be low... but it is effective. The ROI is high.

I agree with Claude, that cold calling generates sales you would never have otherwise.

It would be stupid to eliminate cold calling from your marketing when you're growing a business.

A lawn care company in my area, has 5 people cold calling residential and they've called me a few times. It surprised me, because you don't really think of lawn care companies in that light. I was talking to the owner of the company and he grew his business from 3 lawns, to 50 lawns in 2 months of cold calling from his house. He now has 780 lawns, 35 commercial contracts, and still hitting the phones hard. This year, is the first year he started other forms of marketing, like EDDM and moving things online.

I don't really enjoy cold calling, unless I'm in a weird mood and I'll sit out there with my sales people and make some calls. You don't have to like cold calling... I understand why most will never like it or never try it, but you can not count it out and say that it isn't effective.

In the past year, I've learned a lot about marketing. The number one thing I have learned, is that the more you diversify your marketing and scale up what is working for you, the better you will do. Like I said earlier.... everything works, you just have to work it.

Very informative thread!

The internet is a marketing tool, not a means to its own end. To ignore other marketing sources is to lose a lot of money.

Rick