Feedback on my script for cold calling

Immediate thought is why don't you build yourself such a website, then you wouldn't be interrupting my day and wasting my time...

Thank you for your post. I do see what you mean though the idea is that they will get more customers with a good looking professional website that is mobile responsive than if they did not have a website or if their website is not mobile friendly or looks bad since these days customers often look at a website before doing business with a company. The script used to say "that can build your business a great looking professional website" but I read in several posts on here that it is better to tell the customer what you can do for them and how you can solve problems they have and make them more money than to have a plain description of what you are offering. I know from reading your posts that you seem to be against cold calling but I am trying to add this in addition to several more techniques to grow my business. My prices are too low to make it very profitable to actually visit lots of businesses in person door to door.

Thank you for your post. I agree that cold calling may not be as good today as it used to be. Not to mention these days that people can use lots of online tools to build their own website. I try to make my prices affordable enough that it sways those that thought they did not have the budget for a website to rethink the option and decide to pay my low fee vs trying to do it themselves or not having a website at all. I think with how things are today that most businesses likely know they need an online presence.

I do get some business through my website and through my ranking in search engines but my goal is to use the cold calling and other methods to get even more business. I do see how they may ask the question that why is my website not bringing me business and I would tell them that it does but I am trying to reach more customers by calling. I hope that it does not come up that often.

I am not going to rely only on cold calling. This is just one thing I am trying. If it does not work then I will stop doing it but I want to at least give it a try in addition to other things I am trying. I really want to grow this business but my previous attempts at marketing have not worked out very well and my post for marketing ideas is to try to figure out other things that I may have not tried or thought of that may help. I have been doing this for years and have not spent much on advertising though I am now willing to spend some money to grow the business and hope the marketing ideas post gets me some ideas to try.

Thanks again for your feedback on this post and I appreciate you taking the time to give some ideas in my marketing ideas post. I posted this script here to get feedback on it before I bring in an employee to try the cold calling strategy. I wanted to keep it short but effective. Thanks!

Thank you everyone for the thoughts and ideas.

Neil - I have done this for a few hours. I wanted to try it out myself and actually plan to do cold calling in between building websites while the employee is cold calling.

On the points many made here about the pricing. I tried going for a higher price and that worked ok but I did not get as many sales as I did with the lower price and the quantity of more sales with the lower price more than made up for the difference and the lower price projects took less time. I may try to go for higher prices again in the future but for now I need to pay the bills and thought I would go with what has worked best in the past which was the lower price. I know most web designers do not even look at these lower priced projects but I do not mind it. For now.

Claude - Thank you for the feedback on the script. I like your recommendation and will try alternating something along those lines with my regular script to see which I have more success with.

I would love to hear more feedback on the script itself and recommendations from anyone else that has them to offer. Thanks again everyone for the time and input!

Having managed call centres and trained sales telemarketers for many years I probably know more than most people about this business.

My first reaction is 'it sucks' and the poor callers will get de-motivated very very quickly because of the huge amount of rejection they are going to suffer....that said.

Put them to work and try the script out anyway. Keep a record of numbers dials/contacts/decision makers etc etc.

Then try to figure out at what point the call breaks down and the phone goes down. You'll need to listen it to [or record] quite a number of calls but you'll soon see where the script is failing.

THEN.....[not before then] it is worth asking what people think of the script because it actually matters not one jot what anyone thinks of the script [certainly not on here] until it has been tried.

If [when] it fails that's the time to change it or try to fix it. Why would you wan't opinions on something that has not been tried?

Now it may be that a script like this [that looks incredibly inept to an old cynic like me] works brilliantly for your area/product/situation, in which case you'd have asked advice, and changed it and would never know if it was ok before the changes [sorry I think I lost my mind a bit there]

If your potential customers are not busy, and have not had any cold calls in the last 10 years, and are happy to waste their time listening to about the worst script I have come across then you'll do ok.

Listen......sales is a highly skilled craft and you wouldn't expect to be any good at it unless you knew what you were doing. Your script has been produced by someone who clearly has NO IDEA WHATSOEVER about sales and so the outcome is pretty predictable. Get some professional help or be prepared for very disappointing results. Good luck.

The problem with the pitch is that you don't address their
problem you talk about your firm and what you can do for him
but you don't know his needs or address them at all.

to make them act you got to put some spice in to it.
try to figure out what are their needs and what value you
can bring to the table because the price is not a factor.

second you got to get his attention and make him wonder
how much does it cost. you need to be on the upper hand and
not the way around.

Hi TwoPointZero,

I've managed several teams doing a ton of cold calling. It's really difficult to generate business, but it can be done. I have some feedback for you:
1. "Hey I'm sure you're busy so I apologize if I'm interrupting." Don't start with this. If you start with an apology then it inherently gives them the idea that you don't think that what you're offering is very worthwhile. Be super confident and make sure they can tell that you are not going to waste any of their time and that you can really help them.

2. "I just wanted to give you a quick call and introduce myself." Just get rid of this. It's unnecessary.

3. "My name is Representative Name and I work for a local web design firm that can help your business get more customers with a great looking professional website that is mobile responsive for less than $500.00." A few thoughts here: This is your bait, and what you're trying to get them to bite on. I think this is a good line. There are a few things I would change though. One is that the people you're talking to won't know what "mobile responsive" means unless you explain it, so you might want to say "mobile friendly" or "phone and tablet friendly." Instead of saying $500, I would say something like "affordable at any budget." $500 is really cheap, so I just wouldn't want you to limit yourself too much when a lot of people are willing to spend much more than that.

4. "Just wondering if you knew of anyone that could put us to work." This is too wishy washy. You really want to know first and foremost if the person you have on the phone is interested. You want to be direct and you want to get them talking. Your line would be a good follow-up question if they say no to your first question, but I would ask something like "Are there some changes or updates that you want to make to your site?" If they say no, then you should have some other follow-up questions locked and loaded (such as, "is your site currently mobile phone friendly? This is really important to your rankings in Google.") then you can ask if they know anyone else who is interested. If they say yes, then you get to move further through your pitch.

Eliminating any unnecessary wordiness and getting to the point really quickly is what is best within the script. Building rapport is a totally different story.

These are just my opinions by they come from my experience managing teams and also getting calls with people reading from a script (or paraphrasing - which is definitely better).

A couple of other things that I'll throw out at you too. If you're calling the U.S., don't bother using overseas call centers in 3rd world countries. You'll just waste money. I've tried it several times in about a dozen different ways and have never had enough success to even get in the ballpark of profitability. Callers within the U.S. or Canada are best, and with those ones, if they can't paraphrase the script in a coherent manner then they won't be successful for you. Anyone that just reads the script and isn't able to build a rapport with the client will just be wasting your money.

Thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate getting all these ideas and thoughts from you. This script is meant to only be a quick way to find out who might have interest and then my employee doing the calls will just transfer the call to me at the hint of any interest. I will be paying the employee an hourly wage plus bonus based on sales from their calls. They are only reading the few lines to gauge interest and any questions or interest gets the call transferred to me where I handle the sales and I then talk about their needs and what I can do for them. shadow92 had a post using a similar strategy and he seemed to have a good amount of success with it http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-marketing/1055715-my-3-month-cold-calling-test-results-inexperienced-caller-ridiculous-script-results.html.

helisell - I know the script is not perfect. It is not meant to do the selling it is only meant to find out if they have any interest. The idea is to have my employee do the time consuming task of the numbers game with lots of calls and then the ones that are interested are transferred to me. I will do what you suggested in keeping track of the calls to see how successful it is and see if any parts of the script need adjusting.

Eden - The price of my package is not high enough to spend time qualifying every lead before we make the calls or taking the time to see what the persons needs may be before making the calls. I may try a strategy like that in the future. But for now I want to try a pure numbers game where my representative makes a lot of calls and transfers the ones to me that may be interested which is when I then get into what that business has need of in their website.

Leadsupply - Your feedback gives me a lot to think about on what parts I may want to take out of the script to make it shorter. I was using a pretty close adaptation of the transfer script shadow92 used in the post I linked though I see there may be merit in shortening it and that would also help make my employee be able to make more calls. I see what you mean about the pricing and maybe they may want to spend more but for now I am focusing on the lower budget clients and hope mentioning the low price sweetens the deal during the first phone call enough to make it so even if the person is not planning on doing a website or getting an update that due to the price they will hopefully decide to do it anyway.

Thanks again everyone. I welcome any more feedback or thoughts.

Yeah I can definitely understand how maybe not reading from a script may be better in some situations. For this experiment though I would rather not have to try to hire an employee that has sales or cold calling experience and want to make it extremely simple and quick for them to get through as many calls per hour as possible since from my research this type of cold calling is really a numbers game. I plan to experiment with it to see what way works best. To be honest all I really need to do is get it to where the employee gets me transfers that turn into at least two sales a week with them working 20 hours per week for it to be profitable enough for me to keep it going. If they can make at least 60 calls per hour with a quick transfer script I hope that out of making 1200 calls each week that can turn into at least 2 sales. So I am hoping that this can at least generate that.

You Said......

helisell - I know the script is not perfect. It is not meant to do the selling it is only meant to find out if they have any interest. The idea is to have my employee do the time consuming task of the numbers game with lots of calls and then the ones that are interested are transferred to me. I will do what you suggested in keeping track of the calls to see how successful it is and see if any parts of the script need adjusting.

I say.....
The problem you have is that the whole thing will fall apart long before you have any interest at all. You'll lose the telemarketers because of the immense rejection they are going to suffer.

Just try the darn script and you'll see what I mean, and then you can come on here to learn a new strategy.

You need to take massive action to find out anything. I fully understand the purpose of this script, I just don't believe it will achieve anything until you have taken some action.

I'm sure I could get some business using this script.....I just think there are better ways.

Good luck

Thank you for your feedback. I will definitely try out the script and the variations I have gotten suggestions on in the post. The script does not have to be super successful. It only has to get me at least 2 sales out of every 1200 calls to be profitable enough to do. Once I get that working I will then try other cold calling strategies and scripts and see which performs better. This is just a starting point. Thanks again.

MY suggestion is that you contact one of the few experts we have here on selling on the phone (I'm not one of them). You need to pay someone to write a script that will make you money, and also the answers to the inevitable objections you will get.

Seriously, that's the answer to your problem. It's the least expensive solution you'll find.

Did I see websites being sold at $500?

The economics will be very hard to work in your favor when hiring salespeople
at that price-point.

Best,
Ewen

Absolutely horrible and I only read pretty much the first line. You'll get hung up on all day long with this. If you have someone call with this scripts your completely wasting your time.

Your literally better off calling and saying " Hey I build websites, do you want me to build you a website yes or no?"

Thank you everyone for the feedback. I will definitely consider hiring someone to write me a script and objection answers. For now I need to make some money first. I plan to pay my employee doing the calls an hourly wage plus bonus based on sales. They do not have to be a salesperson just a person that can dial a number read a couple sentences and transfer a call. Office administrative work basically. Eventually I will hire a real sales staff but I need to make money to do that. I will do some testing with this script with a couple alternatives to see which works best for this first experiment. Here is one alternative based on feedback I read here.

Hi. Representative Name calling - could I speak to the owner please"

"Hi. This will only take a few seconds of your time and could help you get more business. I work for a local web design firm that can help your business get more customers with a great looking professional website that is mobile friendly and search engine optimized to help you rank higher in Google search results. All for only $499.00. - What do you think? Could you use more business?"

I may try to make it a little less wordy but it is hard to take stuff out since everything seems informative and engaging.

Why does it say "deleted" when this guy tried to respond?

I deleted my post then posted it with error fixed.

Thank you for the feedback. I really like that script. I will definitely try that out and test it to see which works better for me. I thought with cold calling you wanted to make the script as short as possible. I usually go into the benefits of the website and all that when my employee transfers the call to me. The script I was writing for was to make it to take as little time as possible for my employee to make as many calls as possible. I also figured if it was only two sentences or so the business owner may be more inclined to listen since it is not something they were seeking but the cold call. That is why my script did not get into much of that.

That said I still like your script and will definitely test it out. Like you said it has less technical talk and more things the business owner may be interested in. With this longer script my employee will likely not be able to make as many of the calls each hour though it may turn into more transfers to me which makes up for it.

As far as search engine optimization. I am not a seo firm. I just do the web design and use best practices when building out the website like proper use of headings titles descriptions etc. I really do not understand much of how seo firms are able to charge the business owners a monthly fee and what the firms do each month to warrant the monthly fee. Do you think mentioning so much of the seo in the script may turn into a problem if the client does not rank high once the project is done? I can only do so much with the limited or crappy content the person supplies which happens often and content is one of the most important things when it comes to search engine rank. One of the ways I keep my price low is the person supplies the content in a word document I send them.

Hi,me 1st time coment

Hi, I am Abair

Well, since the feedback received was not good, I've decided to delete it.

Thank you for your feedback and the script you posted. I think it is a little long for what I am doing in this experiment but if I start doing a longer script in the future I may use parts of this. This script needs to be short so my employee can call as many people as possible. I do not need a script for when I do the sales part. I have that part taken care of since I have been doing this for years and know how to sell once I get the business owner on the phone. The script I am doing in this experiment is meant so that an employee with no sales or web design experience can read it quickly to maximize the number of calls the employee does and then if there is any interest or questions they transfer to me where I then do not use a script I talk with the business owner and address any needs they may have and hopefully make the sale.

Trying sell something to people who do not know you is going to be very hard.

You need a website firstly and testimonials, the first thing people will always ask is "what can you do that I can't get anywhere else"

I would advise offering your services for free to start so you can get some good feedback and then add that to your site so people can check it out. Even if you don't get to speak to people on the phone you may still get sales so you can leverage your time.

Speaking here as one on the receiving end of cold calls like the ones you propose to make:

I get some calls from people who think my website is ugly or who think I do not have one but need one.

Long ago, before I know much about websites, I got 2 calls, one from a large company that wanted an appointment to show me the beautiful sites they've built and how beautiful a site they'll build for me; the other one from a guy who wanted to meet with me so we could discuss what my site could do for me.

They called the same week, I met with them both the same week, liked the 2nd one.

I met with them because they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, because I was starting to think I should have a website, because they did not take up a lot of my time, because they did not make big promises and because they did not mention price and (surprise, surprise) because the person who called was relaxed and polite.

I still get a lot of calls and turn down most within seconds because they do not seem to know that I am busy, because they do not seem to know anything about me but make some kind of promise.

Recently, I talked to one because she said something along the lines:

I'm calling you because a person at x business said you might be interested (they named a business whose owner I know). (By the way, I never checked if what she said was true.)

I talked to one because he said his company works with businesses like mine (named the business type and the area) and knows how this business is different from other businesses when it comes to marketing (and quickly gave an example).

I talked to one who told me my website was breaking the law (and told me where and how). She was right (I had missed adding something to the page she mentioned). Did not buy what she wanted because after that, she sucked at selling and actually got me hopping mad with her company.

My point: I talked to people who show me fast there's something in it for me, and the something that's in it for me does have value to me.

I know you said at $500 you can't do much. I'd suggest break down who you're calling by business type, figure out one or two things having a good website (a website you create) solves for that particular industry, and start with that and bring in social proof real fast.

For instance, recently, I was looking for kids dentists. I did not even want to look at a dentist's website, I wanted to find reviews on yelp and google maps. That's the first thing I wanted.

I found a few good ones, went to their websites... I was looking to see if they do a particular thing... Some websites had all the specialties easy to find, some did not. If they did not, I eliminated them.

Assuming the above is common for dentists and I'm not one of a kind, you'd tell them they leave money on the table if people find them but the site they have doesn't clearly show that they do whatever it is prospects are looking for.

Speaking of ugly websites, I got one that everyone in my family and business associates think is so ugly it should be killed. But it makes me more sales...

PS One of the callers I kept in mind for a long time, though I did not want to buy what he was selling said

Hi, I sell abc for x company. Are you interested in buying abc?

I said no.

He said, Now or forever?

I asked him for his number and name and bought a few months later (the next time I needed what he sold).

Thank you everyone for this feedback. I really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this.

Neal - Like animal said I have been doing this for over 7 years and have a nice looking website with a good portfolio. What you recommended may help if I was brand new and needing to build a portfolio but that is not needed.

Eden - I do get what you mean about pricing though I do not think the comparison that you listed is like what I am doing. I have been in business of over 7 years and have lots of very happy business owners that I built websites for so I have a good portfolio and website I show. The price may be low but the end result is not bad looking. It is as good or better than what other firms in my area charge $1500 - $2000 or more for. I may very well go back to a higher price in the future and I still have add ons and other things that increase my profit. Not to mention the repeat business and often they host with me so I get that yearly fee.

DABK - That is very helpful. I do understand what you mean and will test doing a different script for different types of business to see how much of a difference it makes. I like what you said about finding a specific type of business and speaking to them about what people look for when they look on the website. If the script is fast even though it is specialized it may work for this type of experiment. The opening script is only to find out who is interested the ones with questions or interest I no longer use the script and instead talk with the business owner about the benefits of a new design that is optimized including looking at the website if there is one to tell the business owner things I would recommend updating to improve it in the new design. So I do address a lot of the things you mentioned just not in the initial script. The script is meant for an employee with no web design experience or sales experience to simply read it and transfer calls to me that are interested. My hope is that keeping the script quick it allows the employee to make much more of the calls to business owners each hour which then turns into more transfers to me and that in turn makes up for not doing a more specialized script that goes further into the specific needs of each business owner as I do that myself. If I find that it does not make up for it I will adjust and test more.

From the people that posted on this forum and messaged me I have several ideas to experiment with to see what will work best for me and my price. I may also try having pitching the inexpensive price and then me pitching higher prices then see what the sales per hour comes out to between the two. Thanks again everyone!

I've done this exact same thing for the exact same business and I find direct mail works best to warm them up first. Plus, I don't see how you're going to get past the gatekeeper with your script. You're going to get shot down immediately by asking for the owner. You need something more clever as an intro since you only have a brief moment to "get in".

I'd recommend hiring someone (an expert) to write a script for you and then maybe split test some variations of it.

I would simplify it:

Hi, I work for a local (area of target) web design firm that can help your business get more customers with a great looking professional website that is mobile friendly and search engine optimized to help you rank higher in Google search results for a fraction of the cost of yellow pages or other competitors. Would you be interested in our services? (Or would you be intrested in a quote?)


Do you have a portfolio of your work? P.m me I would like to take a look. Do you make websites from scratch or do you use templates?