An alternative to cold calls?

Precisely.

People who quit after three days often walk away swearing it doesnt work..... Strangely they do this even after leaving rooms where it was working for a hundred people all around them... Or they say the leads suck and are unworkable.... When a whole room was succeeding around them with the same leads... Or the "pitch" , when the same was true of the pitch... People are strange.

If they cant go through with it themselves then I guess the natural defense is to blame it on the game and hate it.

If they cant disprove it, then they begin to attack the personal character of any who is low enough to actually succeed at it

By the same token...

There are at least a million people out there saying "I tried internet marketing, or google adwords.... and its all a scam", because they are sore that they didnt get rich overnight. They will passionately tell you how all internet marketers are scum bags.... and how none of it works... , how only idiots and gullible people would fall for such an idea...

Doesnt make it true. Of course it does work, but only if you are not an idiot about it. Ironic , yes?


There are even people on this very forum who say cold calling doesnt work... even as every day another person pops up saying they got sales from cold calling...

They said 20 years ago that the art of phone sales was dying.... yet still thousands of people are working and making quota in call centers every day across the nation , and are still breaking sales records.

Are there better ways.... Im sure. There is always a better way, but telemarketing still works as strong as it ever did.

Custom solutions, or software-as-solution?

Drill down on the problems you solve:
https://www.warriorforum.com/offline...l#post10385609

Study how Perry and Russ do things:
Home - Clients on Demand
How to Attract 5 New Clients Into Your Business By the End of This Week (without spending a dime on advertising!)
https://www.perrymarshall.com/

Do you have any online presence now?
Can you do PPC or have the budget to get it done?

Love this. volume and sheer guts wins all the time as opposed to tweaking your funnel. By the time you're funnel is complete, you'd probably have sales and more in the pipeline but this time more budget to create a funnel, in which case, you'll still be ahead of the guy that wanted to do that first.

I used to spend a lot of time, planning, practicing, preparing....

But never instead of selling. If I didn't have an appointment, I cold called.

It's completely understandable to build a funnel, and tweek it until it produces. But I've seen so many marketers use this as an excuse for not prospecting.
They turn it into an "either-or" decision. You can plan, and built the structure of a funnel, but if you are doing that at the expense of prospecting, it's a mistake.

When I decided to become a speaker on marketing and sales, I opened a retail store, to use as the lab, to test my ideas on marketing. I never wanted to be one of those speakers that didn't speak from a deep expertise on their subject.

Anyway, I was going to speak for an organization, right after the economic crash of 2007. It was before I discovered how to drive buyers into my store with local internet marketing.

So, I got on the phone, three different times, and called past buyers of high end vacuum cleaners, heaters, air purifiers (ones that bought at my store). Of course, I wanted the money, but it was mostly to test the results, so I could report them.

Of course, they all took my call. And of course, they came in to buy whatever I told them I was holding for them. Not all of them, naturally, but enough that...it was the single most profitable use of my time, in any venture, in any activity.

Calling people on the phone, who knew who I was, and already spent money with me.....made me more money per minute, than anything else I have ever done.




Some here would actually call that cold calling. To me, cold calling is calling people who have no idea who you are,and you have no idea who they are. (other than the actual name of the company, or the name of the homeowner)

Over a three year period, the time I kept these record of my actual activity and time spent selling....I knocked on doors. The only thing I knew was...they had a door. I was selling vacuum cleaners. This is perhaps in the later 1980s. (when I still just cold called, before I ran referrals, sold past customers, etc)

For that full three years, there was never an eight hour period of working, where I didn't make at least one sale......to a total stranger, who had no idea I was going to show up, the minute before I did show up.

Was it because I was an incredible master salesman who used hypnotic powers?
No (at least not all of it )It was because I really worked, kept honest detailed records, and cold calling worked.

To be honest, I never got to the point where I enjoyed it. But it sure payed well.

Claude,

Do you really mean:

"But if you need to eat in the meantime...cold calling is better than sitting on you ass."

especially given the negativity surrounding cold calling? Gee, getting off one's dead ass and doing SOMETHING, even cold calling, actually might maybe sort-of work. Wowee zowee who wudda thunk it???

Loved that line in case you can't tell.

Thanks Claude.

I always got a call from "Lyn"

She was an old-timer and used to work for the largest business publication team here in Oz.

When the business eventually sold "Lyn" moved on to another call centre and she continued to call me.

By now we'd probably talked on the phone for maybe 30 hours over about 15 years.

I wasn't on the call list of her new employer but she took it on herself to call me up to sell me on a new service.

Even though I didn't buy then...she knew I was a buyer.

We still talk every now and then....

...usually because there is a perceived relationship....

...but really she knows "I'm a buyer"

and I know "She's a seller"

I always learn so much from those calls.

Of course it wont.

There are only two scenarios.

One: Your conversation moves you towards the next step. In which case they wont be thinking 'gosh, that was unethical to call me out of the blue'

Two: They say no or hang up. Within 10 seconds they are back to doing whatever they were doing before you called.

Vodafone are in Newbury and Microsoft are in Reading. (Telecoms and IT) They both have Telemarketing depts.

They know who they are calling and why they are calling. Both are small departments as that is not how they get majority of their customers but they still do it.

I think their reputations are just fine don't you?

Dan

For example, one is a large company that provides websites. They talk a good game but a Google search revealed that they have very poor service delivery and don't do refunds. They are persistent
and aggressive in their sales efforts.

With a company like that, I'll let my employees know who they are so the employees don't say anything that could be misconstrued as an agreement for services, and so my employees just take a message for me once I've decided I don't want to waste anymore time with that company.