well done, how thoroughly constructive. Cold calling works. How do I know this? Personal experience, oh and a multibillion dollar (probably far more) industry based around it. Many businesses live and die by the quality of their sales staff, and a lot of that is done by cold calling. Don't think big businesses do it? I worked for IBM cold calling businesses pitching database solutions. Obviously you won't sell with every call or email, far from it. But you WILL sell if you have the skills, the right offering and a good manner. But since you managed to be quite so condescending maybe you'd care to share what you consider the best proactive manner of finding new high paying clients of the quality that cold contacting businesses would produce?
I'm sorry. Did I manage to be condescending? I thought I had acquired a tone of encouragement. I can say that cold-calling has the power to both produce and merely discover clients. Why would we only want to know about one possibility out of three? The third, of course is the ability of cold-calling to turn clients away, but we dare not mention that in detail here. How can we address the search phase without knowing the niche? Everything about your approach depends on your niche. Well, THERE'S a loaded word if I've ever heard one. I first learned it as an environmental term in Ecology class in the Biology department at University. There are only overly generalized statements, methods, attitudes and such that can be addressed apart from knowing the specific niche. It also depends on what services you offer, how fast, volume of work you can handle, and the level of sophistication you can produce in both your diction and syntactical constructions. Can you generate the right kind of appeal to reach the audience? If not, move on. You must gauge your own abilities. If you over-estimate your skills you will fail repeatedly. From there you must seek out the right clients to match your skills. Next, you develop an approach that pitches your services at their mental and gut levels. As for resources, EVERYTHING and EVERYONE is a resource. Yet, not all are equally valuable. Again this goes to niche. The resource fits the niche, but never discount creativity as a process of surprise when an unassuming resource yields a goldmine for that unmatched niche.
Of course it is niche dependant, the fact is that every type of marketing works differently from niche to niche. Research is vital, as is having the right information at your finger tips. Cold calling rarely drives off business, and even more rarely drives off business that would otherwise have used you or your services. But I do accept that it does turn some potential customers off - it's a case of playing the numbers, do you get more benefit by cold calling? Is it worth the possible negatives? Clever, guerilla marketing has its place, no doubt. But so to does traditional marketing, and nothing is more traditional than cold contacting. Do research, have information, facts and figures in front of you to help your approach and you can actually increase the professional reputation of your company/self. From the point of view of my recruitment work we do numerous cold calling every day, and most businesses act with respect and understanding. By showing them how and where we can help many businesses engage our services. Thats whats important, you have to be clear about HOW you can help them, and ideally how much and have proof. Quantifiable facts and results will always interest businesses when you contact them, cold calling or no. Many people feel cold calling is rude or a bad idea because they don't like taking those calls. In business such calls are a reality and how a LOT of business gets done. The majority of job boards I buy services from contacted me from a cold call. My IT support company contacted me via a cold call. I have hired two staff previously via a cold call. Backing up your sales pitch with results is a must - but that has no bearing upon the validity of cold calling as a marketing medium.
Yes, I agree. What is insulting on a personal level is constructive on a commercial level. While I would never respond well to a business cold-calling me in the privacy of my own home, if I were a business manager I would allow the other business who is cold-calling to offer a kind of resume of their abilities, followed by a proposal. If all sounded legitimate and reasonable, and assuming my business had a need in that area, I would invite a presentation face to face. Apples to apples, not apples to oranges, right? So if your target audience is the person, not the business, cold-calling may yield far less return on its investment.
Thanks for all the help guys. I don't think that I will be using it in the near future, but it is helpful to know what it is and that, if done right, it can help make money and promote.
Yeah, cold contacting comes in handy if you use it the right way and not just contact a company just for the fun of it. Research companies and individuals before you cold contact them, this way it looks more genuine.
Although I have yet to try it, I have a few writer friends who have increased their client base this way. Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with how you present yourself. ~MLS
By now you know what it is. It appears that it is used by the best of companies on a continuous basis. A certain amount of time is spent on talking people/companies about which you know precious little. This process 1. generates leads 2 makes you known. It is done even if your order book is full. But this does not mean you spam 1000 users with e-mail.
I've done cold calling - some with great results and other calls have just gotten me friendly conversations. I agree that a lot of it is how you present yourself. You need to be organized when you make the call and very respectful of someone's time. Just like a telemarketer you are probably bothering someone or disturbing them during their workday - so you can't take an "I can't talk now" too hard - you need to come back with "when would be a good time for you?"
I'm in the camp that says cold calling works because I did it successfully for over a year. Its just a very tough job on the caller. You have to have a very strong will and a burning desire for money because most people don't want to talk to you. The unqualified cold call process is mostly filtering through people who don't want to talk to you and dont' need what you have, in order to find that rare person who actually does need what you have and is in an agreeable mood. To give an example I would have to collect 500 phone numbers over a day or two. Of those 500 numbers I'd eventually reach 200 people. Of those 200 people, 40 would agree to a follow up and of those 40 I'd get 3-5 buyers on average. Those 160 conversations that did not agree to a follow up were not fun conversations. I'm glad not to be cold calling anymore but it works. I'm sure it can be very different with qualified leads, but thats not what I was given to work with.
1. Cold calling involves meeting people/businesses whom you have never met before. 2. It can be calling at offices or homes and you normally face a high rate of rejection the first time around. 3. You normally make the first meeting a 'how do you do' and a brief intro to the product service. 4. You try and revisit the person and also get leads from them. 5. It often tells you what the competition is trying to do. If you are in a business which you are trying to grow some amount of cold calling is essential.
of course a huge amount of it is actually done by phone/email - which is why i used the phrase what you say makes sense for cold contacting via face to face - but that is very time and labour intensive, I would think methods where you are not travelling around without a set meeting date/time would make more sense. Open to being proved wrong though, always ready to learn new client winnng tricks!
Cold contacting can be highly effective, I built 2 businesses based on it. It just depends on your approach.
For any professional a warm or hot contact is always the most attractive. However, there’s no refusing that cold contacting works when you want to launch or grow your translation business.I think that a phone call is appropriate only in response to a job posting that lists a phone number. If you make a phone call to a potential client, be like e-mail: introduce yourself, get to the point and this is best way to send you my resume.