Cold calling - looking for some script feedback

Thanks for your reply

Regards

PJ

I'm familiar with the Kennedy model. The percentages you gave (if they came from Kennedy) are for mailings to a very select list of previous buyers from Glazer-Kennedy. These are not phone calls, and they are not to a cold list.

I can give you real life results, and they fit perfectly with what Kennedy (and his herd of mini-gurus) experience.

In a market that has never heard of you, and has never bought from you....it will work something like this; (These numbers are in direct mail, not phone calls, but there should be a parallel of principles).

If you are a guru, sending sales letters to a niche....the total percentage that will buy from you eventually, tops at about 5%. meaning that about 5% will buy, given a good enough reason, after multiple attempts...under ideal conditions.

Remember, this is a cold list, in a niche. A list of your current buyers may give you 10-20% eventually. But we are talking about a cold list.

You may get a 1% response on the first mailing. Of the 99% that didn't buy, another mailing will typically give you half of the result you got from your first mailing.

Kennedy talks about a 3 mailing sequence. But that's not what he does. That's not what I do either. That's not what his following of mini-gurus do either. What do we do? We keep mailing until the response stops generating a profit. Then we stop.

And typically, the response may be 1% (which can vary dramatically, but 1% is on the high end). Then typically, you'll get half of that result for the next several mailings.

So we may get the 5%. But that's not the question.

The question is, how big is the list? Because we won't get the same result from our second mailing, as we got from our first. We will get a lower result. Typically half.

It may still be profitable to send repeated mailings. But do you know what's even more profitable? Mailing to new names. And you keep mailing to new names, until you run out of names, and then you re-mail to the list of people who didn't buy.

In the case of large mailers, they mail to the list of people that didn't buy..until it no longer is profitable (results go down with each mailing, in multiple mailings, not up. Ever) and they also mail to new people...because both mailings are profitable. That's what Kennedy does.

So, what has this got to do with cold calling on the phone?

Well.....

Phone calls take time. Mailings do not.
And, if you know...after making hundreds of calls (or thousands, in my case) That you'll get an appointment every six calls (my average with in house monitored telemarketers), if you talk to the business owner...on the first call....you can create usable figures for a formula. If I called personally, it was a bit higher.

If I get people that say "Not now, but maybe later"...and we keep calling them back, my number of appointments per call (to that list) very quickly sinks to;

Second call to same prospect; one in 15...
next calls...one in 46....
next calls...one in 70.
I stopped at the 4th call.

Yes, I actually tested this once about 12 years ago, when I started trying to use the names of people who didn't make an appointment, and who didn't buy. I did this once, over a 90 day period. And that was enough for me. I used in house telemarketers,

Why the sharp decline after each call? Because the people who would never make an appointment with me...were still on my list to call.

And their percentage (the non-appointment makers) of the list, keeps growing. Until I'm really just calling the... "I'm never going to make an appointment with you ever" list.

So....calling a list, over and over, will increase your results-per-name. But the results will grow slower with each successive call. And that growth curve drops off sharply after the first call.

Now...would it be worth mailing them? Maybe. Because mailing doesn't take time. As long as it generates some profit...keep doing it. E-mailing the "non-appointment prospects" would be worth while, I would think. Send them to a website, a webinar? E-mail? Sure.

But the reason I only call once (assuming contact with a viable prospect), is because my results dwindle by half, if I call them again (actually slightly more than half). So...I just call new names.

We were just talking about making an appointment, not trying to sell on that first call. Although the results would be similar, just as the results of a direct sales letter would decline with repetition.

As far as multiple calls after a presentation? Again, I don't do it. But I know it's profitable. Especially, if you are calling the people who didn't buy...from an incompetent salesperson. Those leads are gold.


And phone calls to people who saw a presentation, but didn't buy? Those calls are worth making. Because a person who was qualified to see a presentation (in any form), and now, knows who you are, is very likely to buy eventually..from someone. You may get 10%-30% to buy from you eventually, with repeated contacts and phone calls.

I personally don't call the non-buyers, because it's just more profitable to pitch a new person. But if your sales skills aren't formidable, repeated calls will be more profitable.

I never did a study of repeated sales calls to non-buyers. Although calling non-buyers the next day, once, was very profitable. But it was a 5 minute phone call, not a 2 hour presentation.

Anyway, I sure hope this helps someone, because it was a pain looking up my old figures.

And Underground; You're not a fool, and neither am I. And neither is anyone (I can only vouch for three) on this thread. So, somehow, we are misunderstanding each other. Our experiences can't be that different.