And that's the point one should remember before selling products & services using the cold calling techniques.

Ah yes. I see it was the OLD ME who responded back then, when I was gjabiz, but know that Infocision is still making millions with cold calling. And many others are banging it out of the park too.

The era of cold calling HAS passed, for those who can't do it.

Maybe they aren't interested in what you are offering because __________ ?

Don't want, don't need, you haven't given them a good reason?

Of course, choosing the WHAT to sell goes a long way toward cold calling efficacy.

With the restaurant Chalk Boards business, there is little sales resistance, because it is FREE. So that takes the fear out of cold calling, which is one of the main reasons why some struggle with it, they stink of desperation for a sale, which turns everyone off.

If anyone has had success in the past, they will succeed today. It is, after all, just talking to people. Talk in a way that INTERESTS THEM.

Speak to their needs, wants, what is in it for them...and it will always be a good time to make cold calls, simply because, MOST can't.

Or don't know how.

GordonJ

If you sell to businesses, they still pick up the phone. Old people still pick up the phone.

And cold calling to residents is going to get you a lot of dials, and only a few phone presentations/appointments.

Nowadays either the consumer (if you sell to a consumer) either requests information first (easy to do with direct mail, Facebook, or PPC ads), or they have bought from your company before.

But selling to business owners? They still answer the phone.

Cold Calling is a method of the past. Humans are very intelligemnt these days. If the phone they carry in their pocket and text with and surf the net with every single day begins to ring during their very hectic life. Someone they know better be on the other end. I personally get a minimum of ten calls every single day. If you answer the phone with a single "Hello!" the phone will drop your call. But if you say "Hello,...Hello" then this will connect you directly with a random caller who is sitting in the call center.

What has changed is that now consumers have a Do Not Call List...and caller ID. And businesses get lots of recorded calls.

But callers also have access to dialing software. Cold callers have access to better qualified lists with names of who to contact. The game changes, but human nature doesn't.

Cold calling is essentially just talking to strangers, whether it's by phone, e-mail, in person....it works well enough to do...but there are better ways.


"it still works, only cowards do not like it...blah,blah.."

Most of the people I hear disparaging it are either people who don't do it, or people that are tired of getting calls.

On the other hand, the vast majority of people who cold call on the phone are terrible at it, and are trained by others that are terrible at it (or not trained at all). So it usually ends up being a thoroughly unpleasant chore for the caller, and mental torture for the person called.

And, although these are plenty of examples of companies making cold calls work. There are so many other prospecting methods that are far more pleasant and effective...I wonder why people still cold call strangers.

Added later; I decided to actually count the number of robo calls I got yesterday. 14. Mostly selling some form of online listing or SEO services. And..about half say nothing, because of the way I answer the phone. (or I hang up before the call is transferred).

I agree completely. In fact, the single greatest jump I ever got in sales was when I started applying marketing principles to selling.

And most people I know that "cold call" today, are actually calling leads that were generated by direct mail, PPC ads, or Facebook ads. To me, not really cold leads at all.

And the direct mail leads are always more solid than those gathered online.

Yup, if you can get them to call you first, for any reason, the dynamic is completely changed in your favor. One way to simulate this when cold calling is to call leads that are made up of past customers...or customers of competitors.

A list of buyers (of just about anything related to your offer) greatly increases your odds of them buying from you.


And......when I said that the single greatest jump I ever got in sales was when I started applying marketing principles to selling? It also goes that for marketers, the biggest jumps will come when they learn how to sell face to face.

I was at a Dan Kennedy event when he was talking about copywriters. He said (from the stage) that he would rather have a 53 year old vacuum cleaner salesman write the copy "Because he knows how to sell something". He was talking about me, as we talked about it earlier that day.

A related insight was (when I was speaking to a group of advertising salespeople), that their most profitable expertise would be if they learned how to create ads that sell something. An almost universal travesty is that ad salespeople never learn how to advertise. If they did, they would never have to cold call, because the demand for their services would never stop.

My 2 cents.

[DELETED]

I used to cold call to set appointments. And i hired people to cold call for me...again, to set appointments. these were true cold calls out of the phone book (remember those?)

When I made the calls (after several years selling) about one out of four people I talked to made an appointment with me. They weren't interested in my product, but they wanted a gift I was offering them for their time. It was a bribe. And it worked.

When I hired appointment setters to make the same calls...the same script...to the same people..they would average one appointment an hour..or about a 6% set rate. It was miserable work for them. And it was miserable for me to listen to them on the phone.

I started getting referrals from my customers. These were names of people that had already agreed to see me, to help their friend (my customer) earn a premium (maybe a $300 value).

At first, I just dropped by their home to show my product. Usually, they wold let me in right then. And they (if they bought too) would give me names of referrals that they would talk to before I dropped by.

To save time, I started calling these referrals, to make an appointment. I ended up, after several months, with hundreds of referrals that already agreed to see me...and my schedule was packed all day and every evening.

So I had the brilliant idea to hire someone to call all of these people who had already agreed to see me....so I would be free to just go on appointments.

Can anyone guess what happened?

In less than a week she burned through all of my names. By the next week, I had no appointments with referrals, and lots of customers that were expecting a premium, but didn't have the referral appointments to earn it.

I had to fire the girl (who had no idea she had killed my business), and start over again.

Soooo what did Claude learn? Call your own damn referrals. 80% of the referrals I got, agreed to a presentation...and 80% of those people bought. Never trust anyone else to call them.

There are lots of industries that buy leads . These are people that have expressed at least a mild interest in what's being sold, and are expecting a salesperson to call. These leads cost anywhere from $20-$40 each. Personally, I'd never trust these leads to a caller working for me. At $20 a name, I'd call myself.

What law is being broken by calling someone or a business?

It's definitely a waste of time for those who don't know how to do it effectively. There are many in here who are good at it though. The same can be said for most online methods of making money...a LOT of people don't make any money or even lose money online. Some would say that's also a waste of time...but ask the right people and I don't think they'd agree.

Maybe you've never been offered a product or service that you actually wanted or needed? I don't think you'd feel that way if it was something unique or the person selling was nice and not aggressive, and you actually wanted or needed it.

No.



Yes, just like all prospecting/marketing. Most direct mail is thrown away unread. Most phone calls don't get through, most e-mails are ignored.



Almost nobody thinks that. You may think that, but customers don't.


Should?

Yes, I remember that day, ten years ago..March 22nd...when cold calling stopped working. It was a day of mourning for us all.

And you say this after several of us tell about our cold calling experience...and talk about the companies that are using cold calls? Did you get a cold call in the last week? If you're in business, you have. And these calls make money for the person calling.

Many, if not most of the top decision makers can only be approached effectively through cold call prospecting. Over 90% of the business executives I've sold to were initially contacted by phone, and almost always appointments and/or sales are ultimately made exclusively over the phone. There are lots of marketing tools available, but hardly anything can replace the effectiveness of old-fashion personal communication, such as the phone. Only face-to-face selling is more effective - particularly for high-end products/services.

Train your staff well in proven selling methods, and pay your sales team commission only. I found the phone to be the least expensive and most effective tool for selling - when done right. Email marketing, Social Selling, Paid Ads, and other online exposure tools, etc are merely adjuncts in the total sales process. Technology may change, but human behavior remains the same.

Cold calling is quite alive and well. More people have phones than ever before, and usually now have them instantly available. Cold calling, done right, is actually the quickest and most effective method for generating sales. Having a strong online presence is required these days, but so-called "old school" sales, focused on personal communication and building relationships, has never changed.

Yeah Very Helpful

Yup. Just like any type of marketing, prospecting, or selling....

Someone tries something once or twice, and it doesn't work.

This morphs into "It doesn't work"...and that morphs into...

"It doesn't work in my business"...which eventually becomes...

"This doesn't work for anybody in any business". And we have a new Gospel. And no amount of evidence will change their mind.

When I started selling Kirby vacuum cleaners in 1976 (I bought one already) it took me three months before I made a sale.

My wife (at the time) kept telling me "Nobody is going to buy this"....and I would say "Yes they will. I bought one, others are making sales. I just need to figure out what I am doing wrong".

And I did.


I was talking to a store owner in Canton Ohio. I asked him what kind of advertising he did. He said "Advertising doesn't work in Canton Ohio". And he was serious.

I asked how he knew. He said "I ran a newspaper ad once, and it didn't work".

So he now made the leap that all advertising will fail for everyone in his city....and that was now his Gospel. And that's what we have on these threads on Cold Calling.

Yep, real effective for the OP...

"Cold calling is God's punishment for failure to get enough referrals."

How about:
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/i...ad-buried.html



A number of my clients have shut down their telemarketing. I'll see if I can get permission to post some stats and their reasons for shutting down.

[Grant Cardone holds his phone up in the air above his head during one of his webinars] "This is not a phone, it is a weapon. ... Keep in mind, every call results in a sale. You either make the sale, or you are sold. Sell ... or be sold." Amateurs are sold on the belief that cold calling doesn't work.

I've been doing cold calling for over 20 years, and there is no letup in sight. Of course, it's not a major direct source of revenue, but we have consistently tapped into extremely lucrative markets which the competition has overwhelming precluded through virtually any other commercially viable method. Cold calling levels the playing field when you're up against stiff competition.

Marketing heavyweights have dominated most of the "easy" channels - content marketing, attraction marketing, social media, search engines, PPC, emails, and even some of the primary offline strategies such as advertising, publishing and multimedia.

For some, cold calling is dead as a doornail and has never been effective. For others, it is booming as the most effective and powerful method for preempting the competition.

Just sayin'
https://hockeystickprinciples.com/co...im-just-sayin/

In the form of many calls no less.

The irony is, because of these operations, in this day and age, simple technology such 'Call Guardian' is being rolled out by means of equipment manufacturers and service providers.

Similar to doing joint ventures......
Waiting for your competition to go out of business is highly profitable.
Of course, you're selling in the mean time.

But when a business is ready to close, its inventory and customer lists are available for next to nothing.

And you would be the only person making an offer anyway. How many companies are trying to buy a failing business' customer lists? Damn few.

In my business (retail store vacuum cleaners) my fellow store keepers are dropping like flies. And when they are within 50 miles of me, I make sure I buy what's left, and get the customer list. Highly profitable.

Not so much here. On this Forum it's mostly a few that sell a different way than cold calling, VS the few that actively cold call.

Maybe there is an agenda, but I don't see it.

But yes, if I were listening to a speaker talk about cold calling...either way, they would either be a Social Media guru or a Cold Calling guru. Most Sales gurus stay away from promoting cold calling, because it's more acceptable to promote marketing systems that "do the work for you". And almost nobody wants to know how to cold call more effectively...because even effective cold calling is work.

^^ This exactly.

But that doesn't mean random calling. I cold call quite extensively to reach selected prospects of specifically targeted demographics, professions, and industries.

All this nonsense about "warming up" prospects through social media, ranking in the search engines, giving away freebies, doing product "reviews", building lists, etc is generally way too much work and a waste of time just to get a few scraps - if anything at all.


But strategic cold calling bulldozes through all that BS.

Still works...I've been cold calling business here in the UK and asking if they hire copywriters on a freelance basis.



Managed to find a few interested prospects after going through a huge pile of no's

Steve; I've read the Bill Good prospecting books. Good stuff.

I get it now.

Pure cold calls (not selected at all) to set appointments? I did it as well for years.

It was very easy to get rid of me on the phone. I just wanted to get that one great guy that I could show my product. Yeah, if you're cold calling for appointments, and your leads (names) are free and unlimited, it makes sense to just sort out the few great prospects.

After just a year or so, I figured out that it took me a couple of hours at least to make a sale in person, so I wanted to make sure they were likely to buy before I made the trip.

And raffle tickets are a very simple, low dollar one call sale.

Where a cold caller might want to keep a person on the phone, establishing rapport, is if they are selling on that phone call, or are trying to sell on a subsequent phone call....and if the actual presentation is relatively short.

Also, if you paid for the lead, which was already marginally qualified...you would put maximum effort into every lead, because they are pre-qualified, already showed interest, the lead wasn't cheap, and you have a limited list to call.

And...when selling over the phone, it really does usually take several calls (of long conversations) to finalize the sale.

Even Jordan Belfort (The Wolf Of Wall Street) finally said that they usually closed a sale on the 3rd call.

But even selling in homes, knocking on doors, I didn't try hard at all to gt in the door. I was very easy to say "No" to at the door, or before I presented my product...and very hard to say "No" to, when I was closing, because I wasn't making a return trip.

Good stuff in this thread, I think.

When I was selling in home, and had already invested a couple of hours in the presentation...I would continue to close as long as I could tell they were thinking about buying...or getting closer to buying. If they started pulling away (repeating objections, losing the warmth in their voice) I knew I had lost the sale. But I could keep at it for another hour, if I saw that they were going to buy.

But I eventually learned to just segment out the people that were highly likely to buy from me (for various reasons) and usually it was just one attempt or two that did it.


That whole "It takes 7 closing attempts to get a sale" claim originally came from the 1950s advertising business. An agency did a focus group, and found that it took an average of 7 (or sometimes stated as 5) repetitions before the average person remembered the brand name..

That eventually got passed around and got repeated. So now it's a variation of
"Customers have to see 5 ads before they will call"
"It takes 7 closing attempts before they buy"
"It takes 5 calls before they make an appointment"
"It takes an average of 7 visits before they buy"

And it gets passed around like gospel. But it had nothing to do with sales at all. Just brand name recognition.

Now, the truth is, some sales require repeated closing attempts, some require repeated calls for an appointment, some require a few follow ups....

But it's all over the map, depending on the offer, the prospect list, cold call or qualified lead, inbound or outbound marketing, how many people you have to talk to, whether it's one sale you are after, or building a relationship...etc.

The last few years I was selling my local online marketing service for $5,999......

I would either get no objection..or one. That's if they bought. Because these sales involved substantial work on my part (to fulfill), I really only wanted people that were eager to get started.

But these are people that I qualified heavily before I started my presentation. And most had either read a book I wrote, or watched me speak from the stage. They were pretty pre-sold by the time I talked to them.

Yeah, these aren't really "Objections", more like questions or efforts to put off a decision, without breaking rapport. I don't know why we call them Objections, they rarely are.

The first few "objections" are usually just a smokescreen or attempts to blow you off. When you get past that, the real "concerns" begin to appear. That's when you begin to connect with your prospect.

It can take a looooong time to really make that "connection", so the average salesperson looking for "low hanging fruit" hardly ever gets into any effective communication.

For example, in my cold calling, 80% of the initial sales comes after 5-12 contacts.

I average 4-7 no's per call, and less than 2% of initial calls results in a sale.

This may sound like a rather dismal outcome, but when the competition gives up, that's when I'm just warming up.

In my marketing niches, the competition is quite intense. I have found that cold calling is the fastest way to crash through obscurity.

Getting lots of no's also makes you well known. Even the "no's" will often check you out online after a call.

I call this "targeted cold calling with intent". I use this strategy for targeting specific influential business professionals and decision makers who generally have large networks for potential referrals. For me, it is well worth it.

One of my early mentors told me a story about a young man who had a reputation for picking up women with little more than a crude one line proposition. Of course, he got slapped a lot - but he also closed a lot (got laid).

So, just keep smiling and dialing! Some will, some won't, so what ... next.

It doesn't help rapport at all. It's irritating when solicitors use small talk to open a call.

Cold calling (in fact any phone call) is an interruption. Don't make it worse by wasting their time with small talk.

Rapport building isn't a step in the sales process, it's woven throughout the call. Rapport develops as you go along.

Love it. : ) Thanks Steve.

Most people don't pick up their phone from unknown callers. But they will almost always check out a website left on voice mail. Frequent additional value-added calls left on voice mail adds incremental familiarity.

Who says...?

Pay someone. My research assistant is pretty cheap and would come out cheaper that the price you quote. $400 is about 3 days work...

However, it probably won't do you much good. Most CEOs I know don't read their emails. Their assistants do the reading and only pass on what's relevant. And marketing messages are rarely, if ever, relevant...

Want to get in front of an inaccessible CEO? Find someone who already has their ear. And get them to introduce you...
Start with existing clients.

Edit:
Just saw those numbers
If I were employing you, I'd be more interested in the number of sales you make, not some random number of emails...

If you're in the US, the libraries have a free database of companies (referenceUSA), with contact details. All you need is a library card. Each search is limited to 250 entries, however you can do multiple searches, so could come up with 3k emails in a few hours... Not all have emails, but I'm sure you could find enough...

If you don't consider that legwork, then what exact work are you willing to do to get what you want? 3k emails at 100 emails/2hr is 1 week of working only 8hr days.

Sure there might be other ways, but I just found it curious that you said you're ok to do the work, but in the same sentence said you don't want to work 1 week to hit your target.

I'll be sure to let all the companies doing it successfully right now...know that it's dead.

[DELETED]

Help get the word out to reduce my competition. Tell this to everyone you know, and have them pass it on to everyone they know.

Yup. That's another excellent way to kill time and sales.

"Samson killed a thousand with the jawbone of an ass. That many sales are killed every day with the same weapon."
- Don Daniels

The basics of selling has never changed. So-called "old school" tricks and assault techniques practiced by amateurs and gamers for quick profit never was a sustainable model, no matter what "tool" or "communications device" was used.

On the other hand, establishing "trust" and "credibility" through positioning and online social gimmickry (ie, brand management) before even attempting to make a sale is every bit as misguided as much of the old school sales nonsense. Such a "new" approach is mostly promoted by self-annointed gurus with their own systems to sell.

In sales, people actually do buy you first - not the product. But the product (or service) is what reinforces the communication connection and helps build the relationship. That has not changed since Cuneiform laptop tablets were first brought to market.

An old-timer sales mentor of mine told me more than 30 years ago to engage prospects quickly by selling them something, not positioning or blubbering warm fuzzies. Sell products to find prospects, not find prospects to sell products.

The goal should always be to quickly get a qualified decision, not waste prospects' time pussy-footing around. Sales is far from being a numbers game. Every contact results in a sale - either you get a sale or you get sold.

[DELETED]

Are you talking about cold calls to residents? businesses? Are you selling on the phone call, or setting an appointment for an in person sales call?

The reason I ask is that calling to make appointments to business owners still works just fine. Caller ID changes things. Do Not Calls lists change things.

But there are still plenty of businesses that primarily sell to small business owners by cold calls.

I get between 15 and 20 a day....most are robo calls, but maybe 5 are in person...I wouldn't get the calls if it weren't profitable.

Yes, a "cold call" is one you make to someone who isn't expecting a call from you. It is usually made to a compiled list of names and phone numbers.

I want to address that.

I see the same thing. Someone selling courses on how to use Facebook to make money, but they aren't selling it on Facebook.

But the two biggest names in sales training...Jordan Belfort and Grant Cardone both use cold calling to sell their high end programs. They have banks of cold callers. Highly profitable. And of course, they are trained by the best in the business.

So it works incredibly well selling sales training.

The fact that you wouldn't buy from a cold caller just makes you one of many. I almost never have, but a great cold caller can keep my attention.


Added later;
By the way, I paid Jordan Belfort for his weekly sales training online. I'm a great prospect for his high end training (It sells for $2,000, and i already have it from another source)...but he hasn't had one of his people call me to upsell me. I'm a tad disappointment in him.

I have proven that I like his training, and am willing to pay for it. I have proven that I'll buy training on essentially cold calling over the phone. I have proven that I'm a "Highly Likely" prospect for his high end sales training.
I would estimate that about 30% of the people who have my buying history...would buy his high end training..or pay thousands of dollars to attend a live event....if they were called on the phone.


Same with Russell Brunson. I have proven that I will spend money on what he sells. I have proven that I'll buy repeatedly, and pay a monthly subscription for his advice. I'm a Highly Likely Prospect for his coaching services. But....no call so far.

I should be getting cold calls from these guys. Practice what you preach.

But no, I still get the Viagra calls every week because I bought it once, 25 years ago.....THOSE guys will never give up. I take my hat off to them. They don't quit.

And..I'm disappointed that I'm not getting calls for hair replacement, Testosterone replacement, dental implants, weight loss programs, dating memberships....all of which I should be getting because i once indicated that I'm a middle age man trying to get my MOJO back.

If I sold hair transplant services, and I had a list of 10,000 guys that bought Viagra...I'd make a fortune calling these guys with related offers. So could anyone else.

Cold calling only fails when you're calling the wrong list, with the wrong offer....or you're lazy.

If Belfort or Brunson ever had a person on their team call me, I'd say "It's about damn time!".

Direct sales (including MLM), real estate agents, car dealers, and most home care services are experiencing very high contact rates because more people are at home than ever before because of the pandemic.

In particular, record numbers of people are either working from home or starting home businesses, and the home office equipment and technology sectors are seeing massive growth.