To cold call or not to cold call? That is the question.

At some stage most business owners and salespeople feel the need to cold call. Invariably that need is felt when things are tough and when they are at their lowest energy levels. The results they generate reflect both.

In almost every scenario, a warm lead generated from a purposeful marketing campaign will be an easier sale than a lead generated from a cold call. This is because the cold call is too frequently seen as an intrusion or interruption. I know if I receive a cold call I'm usually doing something else, and unless the caller has a spectacular offer or is promoting something I'm in the market for, my response is likely to be negative.

On the contrary, when I see a marketing piece that offers something of interest, I'm likely to follow it up. My starting point will generally be to visit the vendor’s website to do my due diligence and then I’ll either call or complete the contact form. If the follow up is prompt, I may end up buying.

Where this process falls down is that most marketing pieces fail in their attempt to capture my attention sufficiently to cause me to respond. This is because they don’t make any attempt to relate to a problem I'm experiencing or to an opportunity I might take up.

Enter the cold call. Here’s how to make the cold call work for you…

Start by asking yourself this question:

What problem do I solve, and who has both the problem and the capacity to pay me to solve it?

When you can answer that question, you can then make a list of people who meet your criteria. They become your target market.

Develop a script that first identifies who you are and then asks the question, “Do you have this problem?” If they are a prospect, they will identify with the problem and respond positively to your offer to meet with them to discuss how your offering works for them. That way, when you arrive, you’re treated as a welcome guest as well.

Let me give you two examples of how this approach has worked for me personally…

For several years I successfully sold binding and laminating machines for GBC. I identified sales managers as a target market and saw their problem as being how to get their proposal to look different to their competitors’ proposals. Here’s how I implemented this process:

I approached companies and asked for the sales manager’s name (list harvesting). A day later I rang and asked for the person by name. I said “I'm James Yuille from GBC, we help companies look better to their customers. Tell me, if I could show you how to make every proposal you submit stand out from the crowd, would you allow me ten minutes of your time to show you how to do it?” I was amazed at the response levels. 1 in 2 calls resulted in a meeting. I topped their national sales figures for two years with this simple script.

The second was with a (now defunct) IT training company called Futurekids. They specialised in teaching school teachers how to use computers in the classroom. Again the process began with creating a list of relevant contacts in schools.

The calling script followed similar lines: “I'm James Yuille from Futurekids. We help school teachers with the process of integrating computers into the classroom. Is that something your school could use?” Again, huge response and tens of thousands of dollars in increased sales.

This is a really simple process once you’ve identified both your target market and their issues.

Try it out, and watch for my next article, “How to get maximum leverage from cold calling”.

© James Yuille, 2010.