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Cold calling 101?

by newuser_2
7 replies
Hey,

I am wondering where do guys get a list of business owners to call. Recently I just manually make a list on a spreadsheet, but I find that very time consuming....

Any suggestions?
#101 #calling #cold
  • Profile picture of the author sgtsavvy
    personally, i think its better to go through and build a list of prospects that would be good to work with, at least check their website out briefly/see if they have one. it will take longer than just blindly calling 1000 businesses, but if nothing else you will have a better criteria for what ideal clients that you would like to help out looks like.
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  • Profile picture of the author dancorkill
    Buy a list of all the businesses in your area (Google for this). Then in excel filter by businesses that have a high client value/you want to work with. The more targeted filtering you do the less time you waste on the phone.
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    • Profile picture of the author surfingsherry
      Why do cold calling? Get your businesses to call you.

      Here's a three-step process that might work for you.

      1. Use a good "scraper" program to collect relevent leads for the business
      you are targeting -- you will get email addresses, phone numbers, web sites,
      etc for businesses in the target city, state, region, or country. Put this information
      in a spreadsheet.

      2. Pull out the phone numbers of the target businesses.

      3. Upload these phone numbers into your voice broadcasting system which will call
      these businesses automatically (should be under 3 cents per 30 second call.)
      Make sure you have two compelling messages -- one for "live answers" and
      one for "answering machines." You can also send emails to these prospects
      either before or after the calls.

      If your voice broadcast system calls 500 prospects a day at an average cost of 5 cents,
      the total daily investment would be $25. If you got a 1% positive response rate, you
      would get 5 very warm leads calling you every day you did a broadcast.

      Some voice broadcasting system will call prospects one at a time. If the system
      receives a "live" response that is interested, it automatically transfers the call
      to you. You dial into the system and stay on the line until someone transfers to you.
      Then the system stops calling until you are ready for the next call. If it gets
      an answering machine it leaves a message while calling the next number. You dial in
      with VOIP and monitor your contacts on your computer screen with the built in contact manager.

      Once you get the marbles out of your mouth, you should be able to close 2 sales out of 10.
      Once you get better, you can close more.

      Whatever way you get your leads, using a voice broadcasting system can let you
      get 3-4 hours worth of actual conversations in about a hour because you never dial,
      deal with answering machines, disconnects, busy signals, or get distracted.

      The scraper and the Voice Broadcasting System can be purchased for $150 and up.
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  • Profile picture of the author mr2monster
    Originally Posted by newuser_2 View Post

    Hey,

    I am wondering where do guys get a list of business owners to call. Recently I just manually make a list on a spreadsheet, but I find that very time consuming....

    Any suggestions?

    I get my lists from the corporation commission and the chamber of commerce. Generally they cost a little money and are cumbersome to get, but it's worth it.

    Then I chop away all the fat and only spend my time on the types of businesses that fit my criteria. I might get a list of 500 people and only call 10. But those 10 work well with what I have to offer, it makes sense, and it makes "selling" a whole hell of a lot easier.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joshua Morris
    I just use Yell.com or another online directory, and look through websites until i think one needs work..

    The other best method is looking up a keyword in google lets say for something like "florists in london", and going straight to page 5, and look through websites from there.

    Since they are so behind in the ranks, chances are they need SEO, and if they have a crappy site with no email form, or no social buttons, then you know they need your help.

    Getting massive lists of businesses is kinda pointless, at least i thought so, because you spend so much time trimming the fat... you might as well be starting from nothing and working your way up.

    Also by getting big lists, you have no idea where they are in the rankings unless you do a ranks check, which takes time that you dont want to invest if they are not worth it.
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  • Profile picture of the author salomeh
    mr2monster is right. Get a list and then filter those business that fits your criteria.
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    • Profile picture of the author MarcusMcDaniels
      I'm using a broadcasting platform to do this already. Surfingsherry : 5 cents is WAAAAAY too much to pay for this. I'm paying 7/10ths of a penny per minute to send out the calls. I scraped the list off google, then sent out the messages. But the broadcasting company i'm using also give me a list to call if I want to use theirs. The scraped list always does better though. My total cost for 500 calls is $3.50. The service i'm using is "message communications" www_messagecommunications_com and tell them you want to signup for their "reseller program" where you sell the service to other people in your group. They'll give you a discounted program so it's dirt cheap to get these calls out. I originally bought the software to do it, but it's cheaper to use a service bureau.
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