Are you selling a commodity or your expertise?

Actually, you can sell fairly complex programs cold calling (I assume you mean by phone). In fact, when you are starting out...it is the single most profitable approach.

And you could cold call at a high level, for the rest of your life, and make a great living. We know this...because It's been done already. So it isn't opinion, it's a fact.

Now for the flip side of cold calling by phone. Every call starts at Zero. If you continue to cold call for years, every day you need to beat the bushes, looking for new people. And it never gets more efficient (except for technology).

So, referrals (if done intelligently) are far easier to sell, take less time, and stick as clients longer. That's also a fact.

And I've said this before... Yes, getting them to call you is the best way to sell, for a multitude of reasons. But, you can't forget to mention the enormous amount of work and expense you have to go though to get the phone to ring. With cold calling, you don't have to wait for them to call.
I don't know about you, but I have lots of lead magnets. I've written a few book, I do speeches, I have dozens of websites attracting calls. And I do get calls. Do you get six hours of calls to you a day? I sure don't.
And if you do, I want that program.

And, while you are building that pipeline of lead magnets...you can also be paying your bills with cold calling.

See? Cold calling isn't evil. It isn't even inefficient. But there are more comfortable ways to get sales, after you have built the necessary infrastructure.

And I mean this in the nicest way....virtually every person that says cold calling doesn't work, isn't doing it, and never figured out how to make it work.

No successful cold caller ever said "You know, I'm really good at this, but darn it...it's the worst way to get new clients".

And I'm not a cold calling guru. I only cold call trade associations for speaking gigs. But I know a winning strategy when I see it.

I am a legend in my own mind.:rolleyes:

Disagreements are good! Like I said, it's my opinion. I think it's a terrible way to build a business that will allow you to grow and succeed over the long-term.

And quite frankly, who wants to be calling people for the next 10-20-30 years? Why not build a business and have them call you?

Take a big brand like Coca Cola.

They have a team that gets their product into stores via calling on retailers and then supporting them through point of sales material.

At the very beginning, somebody walked into those shops cold to get distribution.

Big brands get distribution into Walmart by cold calling them to set up meetings.

That's how big business is done.

Best,
Ewen

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly too. Thats why I teach appointment setting and not one call closing for the most part, unless its some kind of small deal or loss leader you are selling thats low risk.

Whether you run your appointments face to face or by phone, selling these days is a two step process or more... you can sell someone in two calls... but its a rare day when you close them for more than a few hundred dollars in one call.

Its like having a mailing list.

You dont just send people straight from google to a sales page because you will lose 90%. You get them into a funnel and build the relationship, and over time you can sell more like 70% of them at one time or another.

But, the appointment was still made by cold calling :p

Just pulling your leg, but some form of "cold contacting" is almost unavoidable when most people are getting into business.

Call it what you want: Direct Mail, Emailing, Appointment Setting

At the end of the day, its all cold calling wrapped in different packaging.

Thank you sir.

Is it just me noticing this or do clients that come from cold calling end up saying something like "I'm really glad you called me!" or "Thank you for calling me..I really needed a new...."