Need advice. Please.

Are you scared of cold-calling? The answer is to find a way to have your prospect call you. If you're afraid to talk with anyone on the phone, even when they call, you should work on getting over your fear.

That said, there are more things you can try:

Is is easier to talk face-to-face? Walk into some businesses and talk with the owner directly.

Is that another hurdle? Mail some postcards or letters.

Give us some specifics of your situation and we'll be able to offer specific solutions.

It's not really as bad as you think. I was afraid of cold calling as well in the beginning. But the reality is "if you don't ask, you don't get" So once I changed my mindset, it became easy to pick up the phone and talk.

I face the same issue myself - don't care for it one bit.

That being said - when I listen to good, uplifting sales material or read it, I feel much more confident.

Google Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, or Jim Rohn. A plan will help take the fear off of the table.

Its a numbers game guys.

You need to either make enough phone calls or face to face calls so you overcome your apprehension and self imposed mental blocks.

Point in case;

I used to run a roofing company, all my competition took jobs on a no money down basis and asked to get paid when the job was complete.

I decided I wanted a 50% deposit to start any job. My salesmen freaked OUT!

WHAT? I'll never close any deals bla bla bla bla.

Truth is I was closing deals with 50% deposit for a long time before I asked my salesmen to do it.

Whats the point?

It was my sales forces own preconceived mental blocks and assumptions of how a potential prospect would react when asking for a 50% deposit that make them fear asking for it.

After I reprogrammed them they all came back and told me they should have been doing this for many many years.

So you don't like making cold calls or face to face calls. It all about your own mental blocks, just realize that and you have won half the battle to overcome it.

You are all soo right! I know my fear is getting in the way of me getting my clients.
I guess my fear comes from working at a call center answering phone calls from angry customers, and being threatened and called names. I only lasted there 2 weeks. I remember going to sleep at night and still hearing their voices in my head.
I can't do any face to face meetings with clients because my business works better with US clients, and I'm not from the US.
I'll just have work on overcoming my fear. Is there a book on that? hehehe..
Thanks for your input guys.

You could run an ad in your local paper or better yet put on on CL or even Ebays classified section. There are a ton of people looking for work. Just make sure you have all of the details ready when hiring them and to a way to weed out the serious from the curious.

The catch 22 here is, that in order to hire someone to do cold calling, you need to have the experience to be able to coach them. This includes walking through your script with them, helping them learn to overcome common objections, and how to effectively close an interested client.

You can hire experienced B2B cold callers, but they are very expensive($20-30 an hour). Most of them are worth it, as the learning curve is much shorter, if any. They don't need much training, can work on their own, and generally do a decent job closing.

If you are planning to hire the "average" person with maybe a little cold calling experience($8-$10 an hour) you are going to have to train them. And to train them, you need experience yourself.

So I would suggest that if you want to implement this great sales tool in your business, you look for ways to get over your fear. There are several great resources to help you with this fear on The Telemarketing Forum - Index I would check it out.

I would echo what others have said. Go ahead and give it a try. Force yourself.

I can't imagine anyone being more afraid of cold calling than I was. I put it off for the longest time. But I needed to do it to try to build my business, so I finally forced myself.

I wrote up some scripts -- one for speaking with the contact, one for a voice mail message. Printed the scripts out in a BIG font so I couldn't possibly lose my place. And then picked up the phone, and started dialing.

Yep, I did some stuttering and stammering at first. Left a few quavery-voiced voice mails. But I was astounded at how quickly I became relatively comfortable with it.

Now, I know that I can do it when I need to.

You can too. I KNOW you can.

Olga: JUST DO IT!
That really is the key. I went through a similar thing about a year ago. I was terrified of talking to groups, so I got a job selling blenders in Costcos and Sams Clubs just because I new I would have to confront my fear - initially it was an adventure in stress, but I got through it and lived to tell the tale!
One attitude I adopted that helped:
I decided to accept that I would mess up; accept that I would blush, tremble, feel awkward, perspire, look dumb. I went in with that attitude and it allowed me to be there, totally uncomfortable, but feeling like I was winning the war!
What do you know, within a week or two I felt like a seasoned pro! Amazingly, a couple of months into the gig, I would be standing in front of 20 people talking to all of them and actually feeling board! I was so comfortable with it it was scary. But that's what happens if you can just get yourself to jump over the first hurdles - namely, just doing it.
I quit the gig once I'd reached my goal of being comfortable in front of a crowd, and I still feel comfortable talking to groups now. So you get long term benefits from short term but determined activity.
So go for it! Because you will benefit more than you can comprehend now. And it will make you a stronger person.
Decide today that you are going to do cold calls, and bask in the feelings of fear and apprehension, until you can do them without trepidation. At that point you can give yourslef a big slap on the back and celebrate your new-found talents.
Have fun!

Do it without any fear everything it will be fine

Set your expectations low. I wasn't good on the phone first either. Absolutely dreaded doing it. I got a list of 100 businesses and promised myself I'd call them. I finally buzzed through the list in a sitting. I didn't get any leads, but I was so proud of myself, and at the end felt so much more comfortable.

Did I butcher things? Yeah I did. But I was glad I fumbled over my words in the beginning, rather than when I was talking to qualified prospects.

Another great "come out of your shell" idea is to attend a local chamber of commerce mixer. Keep in mind that EVERYONE there is promoting themselves, so you should fit right in. Break the ice and talk to a few people. It helps you become more confident in what you do.

Speaking of confidence, if you are worried about not having past results and such to show, I would suggest spending some time getting a generic website to the top of the search engines, like mytownrestaurants.com or something (whatever is available). That way you are approaching people with an awesome selling point, and they already know you get results

Matt