Offline Marketers... STOP thinking about yourself. Your losing out on Sales!

by Diice

Posted: 13 years ago 6 replies

OFFLINE MARKETING

Hi guys,

This is a quick post for anyone that is struggling to secure Offline Clients. The Odds are that you are making the same mistakes as the majority of Cold-Callers and Email Marketers.

Over the course of the next few days i am going to be posting several different tips and outlining mistakes which you cannot afford to make as a Warrior.

STOP Thinking About Yourself

As obvious as this sounds, it is often an immediate downfall for any form of marketing. This has been said time and time again in the forum, and you probably think you understand it by now... but it is incredibly easy to overlook.

Look at the situation from the Clients point-of-view . Lets assume you are Cold-calling a company you wish to sell your services to, the first thing the majority of you will say is:

"Hi im Dave from {company name} and i'd like to speak to the owner of the company regarding some great offers we have on Website design"

Do you really think Dave gives a crap about what you are selling?
Chances are they will hang up on you before you have even finished your sentence.

You need to remember these companies receive calls like this EVERY day. Why should they speak to you?

This is why you need to stop thinking about how much money you want to make when you call a business.

Remember :

"People do not like to be sold, They like to buy"

As soon as you start talking about how great your product is and the prices you charge a little switch flicks in their head. And as soon as that switch goes there is nothing you can do to make the sale. That Client is now gone, why? Because it was ALL about what you can do. In effect, you are unconciously boasting about everything you can do.

If you are struggling i urge you to look at things from a different perspective, research the company before you even think of calling them. Talk about their business, ask about things it offers, get to know the company and what it wants. Then simply fill in the gaps. You HAVE to be different, otherwise at the end of the day you are just going to keep getting rejected, and missing out on vital sales and relationships.

And Business Relationships are KEY to success.

So to round up...

Be interested in their company, dont try and force a sale down their throat as soon as they pick up the phone, they get it all the time and they know how to deal with it. Try different things, and make sure you are genuinely interested in helping the business thrive, and in turn.. they will repay you with the same enthusiasm and aid you have given them.

Best Regards,
-Michael

#marketers #offline #stop #thinking

Aaron Doud

13 years ago

Devil's advocate here.

1. Getting to know the business before you call is great but and this is a big but..... What happens when you don't close them? Let's say you wasted an hour reseacrhing them and you can't close them. Now let's say you do an hour of research per call. You close 10%. That means before you have even gotten started you have 10 hrs into each sale. Now how long will the service you are providing take you? Let's say 3 hours and you are charging $500. Also you have contracts and other stuff so let's say the closing and checking with the customer takes two hours so for each sale you have 15 hours into it. That comes out to $33/hr * 60%(40% for taxes) means you are making about $20/hr. Not bad but can you close 10%? What if you only close 5%? How about 1%? Cold calling is a numbers game. if researching the companies helps you close a greater percentage that justifies the time that is fine. But does it?

2. People do like to buy. They like to buy what they want and need. I'm on the other end of these calls and while most cold calls suck and I ignore them. I also don't want a guy on the phone trying to be my friend. Be professional. Be original. But get to the point. If the product or service has value and i need it you can sell me. If I don't need it or don't see the value why waste either of our time?

3. The "why should they speak to you" line is a great one. Why should I be talking to you? This is a huge key. The better your answer on this and the faster you can get me the answer the more likely I am to buy. If you sound like all the other cold calls I won't see a reason to talk to you. If you call to sell me SEO and I am number 1 or number 2 for my keywords I won't see a reason to talk to you. If you offer me something free or cheap I will not see a reason to talk to you. Remember I am used to dealering with real businesses with real prices. So can you get my attention? Can you show value? And can you do this before I hang up on you? No matter what you know about my company if you can't do this it doesn't matter. Which ties into number 1 above.

4. This ties into number one as well. At some point you are going to want to get me talking. Isn't this a better time to learn about my busines? Once you got me interested and you let me tell me what I need and how my business is doing.

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Aaron Doud - Sales & Success

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Diice

13 years ago

Originally Posted by Aaron Doud

Thanks Aaron,

some great pointers there.

I would like to focus on your first point however, i completely agree with you. I am not for one minute suggesting that you should spend an extended period of time researching a company before contacting them. I suppose what i am trying to put across is know your business before attempting to get in touch with them. So im not saying spend hours studying the company, but for example... Maybe check to see if they are running any advertising campaigns on Google etc. That way we know they are already spending money for promotion, they are obviously looking to expand their business.

"Cold calling is a numbers game" - I have to disagree with you on this, in some respect i do agree with you. However i feel that it is only a numbers game if YOU make it a numbers game. Its about perfecting the technique during the call, being able to read the person on the other end of the line and being able to adjust yourself to interest them.

Obviously there is an aspect of it being a numbers game, however i think that point is sometimes put across too bluntly to beginners. Hence you end up with people calling you up with the same technique everyday, because they think if they do it XX number of times, they will surely make 1 or 2 sales. And i agree with you, there is a lack of professionalism in Cold-Calling now. I can certainly see how allot of people are treating it as a numbers game.

Can i ask if any cold-callers have ever gotten you interested in a product, or have been able to comfortably form some sort of conversation?
It may be helpful if you have to people learning Offline Marketing and capturing leads.

Thanks for your comment,
best regards,
-Michael

Thanks

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sdentrepreneur

13 years ago

I have been full time offline marketing since early 2008 and have never made one cold call.
What worked for me was to place ads on Google/Yahoo/Bing offering services to businesses.
They clicked on my ads and called me. It's really pretty simple.
From a ground game/social perspective, I would attend MeetUp, LeTip, BNI. Chamber and Business Mixers. Would build relationships and when these businesses found out I could generate leads/sales from their web sites, it was easy to qualify the client and close deals.

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Diice

13 years ago

Originally Posted by sdentrepreneur

Thanks for the reply!

You spoke of Google ads etc. Can i ask what sort of service you were offering these companies?

For some services PPC ads dont tend to work that well.

Best regards,
-Michael

Thanks

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sdentrepreneur

13 years ago

I have run ads for Social Media, SEO and Google Maps. So....when a business searches Google Places Marketing, I am actually now there organically, no more PPC.
Your ads need to be laser focused on the keywords business owners are looking for and have some form of lead capture/sales funnel in place to convert to a sale.