Man Up and Cold Call!!!!!!!!!

I love it! Action! That is all that separates those of us making it happen and those who dream about it...


I love what Jack Mize taught me awhile back: he said that all a person can do to ensure success offline is to have as many conversations as possible. I also have learned that you can never control outcomes (i.e. sales), so never set your goals on how many sales you want to get in a given time, but to set your goals on controllable activities. Rolltide, you have set yourself up for tremendous success! Congrats!

Keep Rockin!
--Ben

I'm glad to see you sharing your action plan!

2000 calls over 20 working days, with about 20 dials an hour, comes out to 5 hours of calling a day. That's ambitious! And it doesn't factor in time spent on longer conversations. So you could easily spend 7 or 8 hours Mon-Fri doing this.

35 appointments, or a little more than one a day, is reasonable if you're going to call in these volumes. But the key will be staying focused and not getting discouraged. 7 or 8 hours of calling every day is a lot of calling -- much more than I recommend as a trainer. You have to be "up". You have to feel a "10". You have to constantly remind yourself that you're providing value in every conversation you try to have with a prospect.

Your script will be integral to the success of your effort. Day One will be tough. Day Fifteen will be the most natural thing in the world. The hard part is getting past Days One, Two, and Three. I feel like you are warming up for the Iron Man of Prospecting!

RockstarBen makes a good point that you cannot control outcomes, only activities. You can control whether you make the calls or not, and how good they are. You cannot control whether the person you need to talk to is available or interested. Through your activity, however, you WILL line up a bunch of opportunities. It's important to keep 'em coming, your pipeline full, and that's why prospecting is necessary.

I'd like to see your script, if you're willing to share it. You could post it here or PM it over and I'll have a quick look. You've got Warriors rooting for you!

20 total appointments for November. Not 35

15 by Thanksgiving
5 between Thanksgiving and Dec 1

This is great, I'm in the same boat!! Ready to unleash my services to local businesses. I've been putting off the cold calling for a few weeks, but I need to start earning money!!

Good that you have a plan, I wish you the best of luck.

I think you will get more than 15 meetings from 2000 calls if you got a good pitch.

You're not here in Arizona are you? :p

I do not need that kind of competition!

Just out of curiosity...... What's your phone script going to sound like? I recommend not trying to sell over the phone. Educate them and get that face to face appointment. Get them wanting more during your first meeting and leave there with a check! You have to let us know your results during the month.

Best of luck to you. If you are simply setting meetings and not selling over the phone I would imagine that you would get a lot more than 35 meetings out of 2,000 calls. Either way, stick with it and don't over think it. Just sit down, call and adjust as you go!

One thing that you are going to find is as you go along, you will end up getting better and need to do less calls to hit your appointment goals because you will get better on the phone.
And as you go along your close rate, how many prospects turn into custemors will go up, as you become more experienced.
So even though your plan is 2,000 calls this month, what you might find out is week 1 you might have to do say 100 calls a day, but by week 2 you might only need to be doing 75 a day, then week 3 you might only need to do 50 a day. The reason is because you will be improving.

The fitness company that I work for expects us to set 8 appointments a day, with a 50% show rate so only 4 appointments actually show up, and 50-70% close rate so 2-3 sales a day.
At first I was making a lot of calls, but then as I became better I needed to make less and less calls to hit my goals. Now, after a couple of months I have the highest show rate for appointments, this means that for every 10 people I call 7 show up. Now this is for fitness so it might be different for a seperate industry.

But my point it keep with your game plan and you will notice your numbers will improve and you will begin getting greater results with less work as you improve.

Shane_k

sweet deal! I suspect you speak for the silent majority who've been putting this critical task off I'm on a similar path. Look forward to seeing your progress.

go git'em tiger!

excellent! action is #1
remember to take care of yourself/watch yourself thru the hours.
I mean from a point of performance / psychology - how you change in
your tonal expression thru the hours in relation to all the NO/YES and
the millions of MAYBE/DUNNO/WHO ARE YOU´s

Know thy self Know your customer ..make a sale.

never forget THEIR PERSPECTIVE!!!!


best of luck! GO!

THANK YOU for this awesome thread. I was supposed to 'man up and cold call' at the end of last week, but kept staring blankly at the phone/screen/outside the window ... until inevitably deciding to fart around on the web instead.

This thread has been a kick up the backside on the one hand, and a positive inspiration on the other. Thanks to the OP and to all who've posted their advice and 2c.

I did 2 hours this afternoon, called 32 companies, sent 2 emails to warm prospects and scheduled 5 follow up calls across the next week.

I felt SO DOWN when I knew what I was supposed to be doing, but wasn't doing it. Now I feel ... I feel ... ...

Like a MAN again.

Or a woman.

Either way, a Warrior!

great plan, no reason why you will need to ever look for the unemployment office...RTR!!!

@eatnatural: good effort! If you put activity into the world, it sends activity back to you. By calling you WILL get appointments/sales/results, and at the minimum you'll get feedback on how your approach is working so you can adjust. Sitting there worrying and doing nothing creates no results, as you have noticed.

32 calls in 2 hours is a good # of dials. To keep your spirits up, I suggest calling 1-1/2 or 2 hours at a time a couple of times a day, with a break in between.

I like your Moxy!

Let us know what happens, OK

Seb

Cold calling can end up working very well if you have a tough chin and can take some hits along the way.

The best advice I can give you is to record the calls and go back and listen to them later on. You will start to notice trends and start to pick up on things that you didn't notice while you were in the "HEAT" of the call.

You'd be amazed at how changing the way you introduce yourself or even just using a different tone can increase your response rate.